Researchers studied grasslands in Kansas to see if they could estimate how much sunlight the grass captures and how much leaf area it has by looking at the color of the grass from above. They found that the greenness of the grass was closely linked to how much sunlight it captures. They used two methods to estimate the leaf area, and one method was more accurate than the other. The color of the grass from above can tell us more about how much sunlight it captures than how many leaves it has.