Rights statement: Copyright 2005 by the American Geophysical Union.
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Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Estimates of forest canopy height and aboveground biomass using ICESat
AU - Lefsky, Michael A.
AU - Harding, David J.
AU - Keller, Michael
AU - Cohen, Warren B.
AU - Carabajal, Claudia C.
AU - Espirito-Santo, Fernando Del Bom
AU - Hunter, Maria O.
AU - de Oliveira, Raimundo
N1 - Copyright 2005 by the American Geophysical Union.
PY - 2005/11/1
Y1 - 2005/11/1
N2 - Exchange of carbon between forests and the atmosphere is a vital component of the global carbon cycle. Satellite laser altimetry has a unique capability for estimating forest canopy height, which has a direct and increasingly well understood relationship to aboveground carbon storage. While the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) onboard the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) has collected an unparalleled dataset of lidar waveforms over terrestrial targets, processing of ICESat data to estimate forest height is complicated by the pulse broadening associated with large-footprint, waveform-sampling lidar. We combined ICESat waveforms and ancillary topography from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission to estimate maximum forest height in three ecosystems; tropical broadleaf forests in Brazil, temperate broadleaf forests in Tennessee, and temperate needleleaf forests in Oregon. Final models for each site explained between 59% and 68% of variance in field-measured forest canopy height (RMSE between 4.85 and 12.66 m). In addition, ICESat-derived heights for the Brazilian plots were correlated with field-estimates of aboveground biomass (r(2) = 73%, RMSE = 58.3 Mgha(-1)).
AB - Exchange of carbon between forests and the atmosphere is a vital component of the global carbon cycle. Satellite laser altimetry has a unique capability for estimating forest canopy height, which has a direct and increasingly well understood relationship to aboveground carbon storage. While the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) onboard the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) has collected an unparalleled dataset of lidar waveforms over terrestrial targets, processing of ICESat data to estimate forest height is complicated by the pulse broadening associated with large-footprint, waveform-sampling lidar. We combined ICESat waveforms and ancillary topography from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission to estimate maximum forest height in three ecosystems; tropical broadleaf forests in Brazil, temperate broadleaf forests in Tennessee, and temperate needleleaf forests in Oregon. Final models for each site explained between 59% and 68% of variance in field-measured forest canopy height (RMSE between 4.85 and 12.66 m). In addition, ICESat-derived heights for the Brazilian plots were correlated with field-estimates of aboveground biomass (r(2) = 73%, RMSE = 58.3 Mgha(-1)).
KW - ATMOSPHERE
KW - LIDAR
U2 - 10.1029/2005GL023971
DO - 10.1029/2005GL023971
M3 - Journal article
VL - 32
JO - Geophysical Research Letters
JF - Geophysical Research Letters
SN - 0094-8276
IS - 22
M1 - L22S02
ER -