Tree Crowns Cause Border Effects in Area-Based Biomass Estimations from Remote Sensing

The estimation of forest biomass by remote sensing is constrained by different uncertainties. An important source of uncertainty is the border effect, as tree crowns are not constrained by plot borders. Lidar remote sensing systems record the canopy height within a certain area, while the ground-truth is commonly the aboveground biomass of inventory trees geolocated at their stem positions. Hence, tree crowns reaching out of or into the observed area are contributing to the uncertainty in canopy-height–based biomass estimation. In this study, forest inventory data and simulations of a tropical rainforest’s canopy were used to quantify the amount of incoming and outgoing canopy volume and surface at different plot sizes (10, 20, 50, and 100 m). This was performed with a bottom-up approach entirely based on forest inventory data and allometric relationships, from which idealized lidar canopy heights were simulated by representing the forest canopy as a 3D voxel space. In this voxel space, the position of each voxel is known, and it is also known to which tree each voxel belongs and where the stem of this tree is located. This knowledge was used to analyze the role of incoming and outgoing crowns. The contribution of the border effects to the biomass estimation uncertainty was quantified for the case of small-footprint lidar (a simulated canopy height model, CHM) and large-footprint lidar (simulated waveforms with footprint sizes of 23 and 65 m, corresponding to the GEDI and ICESat GLAS sensors). A strong effect of spatial scale was found: e.g., for 20-m plots, on average, 16% of the CHM surface belonged to trees located outside of the plots, while for 100-m plots this incoming CHM fraction was only 3%. The border effects accounted for 40% of the biomass estimation uncertainty at the 20-m scale, but had no contribution at the 100-m scale. For GEDI- and GLAS-based biomass estimates, the contributions of border effects were 23% and 6%, respectively. This study presents a novel approach for disentangling the sources of uncertainty in the remote sensing of forest structures using virtual canopy modeling.

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Forest Biomass Estimation Based on Forest Inventory Data in Middle and Last Scales

Advanced Materials Research ◽

10.4028/www.scientific.net/amr.183-185.220 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 183-185 ◽

pp. 220-224

Author(s):

Ming Ze Li ◽

Wen Yi Fan ◽

Ying Yu

Keyword(s):

Tree Species ◽

Forest Inventory ◽

Forest Biomass ◽

Biomass Estimation ◽

Total Biomass ◽

Inventory Data ◽

Biomass Equation ◽

Tree Species Composition ◽

Forest Inventory Data ◽

Ecosystem Carbon

The forest biomass (which is referred to the arbor aboveground biomass in this research) is one of the most primary factors to determine the forest ecosystem carbon storages. There are many kinds of estimating methods adapted to various scales. It is a suitable method to estimate forest biomass of the farm or the forestry bureau in middle and last scales. First each subcompartment forest biomass should be estimated, and then the farm or the forestry bureau forest biomass was estimated. In this research, based on maoershan farm region, first the single tree biomass equation of main tree species was established or collected. The biomass of each specie was calculated according to the materials of tally, such as height, diameter and so on in the forest inventory data. Secondly, each specie’s biomass and total biomass in subcompartment were calculated according to the tree species composition in forest management investigation data. Thus the forest biomass spatial distribution was obtained by taking subcompartment as a unit. And last the forest total biomass was estimated.

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High-resolution forest carbon flux mapping and monitoring in the Pacific Northwest with time since disturbance and disturbance legacies inferred from remote sensing and inventory data

10.5194/bg-2016-163 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Huan Gu ◽

Christopher A. Williams ◽

Bardan Ghimire ◽

Feng Zhao ◽

Chengquan Huang

Keyword(s):

Remote Sensing ◽

Pacific Northwest ◽

Forest Inventory ◽

Stand Age ◽

Net Ecosystem Productivity ◽

Fine Scale ◽

Ecosystem Productivity ◽

Inventory Data ◽

Forest Inventory Data ◽

The Pacific

Abstract. Assessment of forest carbon storage and uptake is central to understanding the role forests play in the global carbon cycle and policy-making aimed at mitigating climate change. Current U.S. carbon stocks and fluxes are monitored and reported at fine-scale regionally, or coarse-scale nationally. We proposed a new methodology of quantifying carbon uptake and release across forested landscapes in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) at a fine scale (30 m) by combining remote-sensing based disturbance year, disturbance type, and aboveground biomass with forest inventory data in a carbon modelling framework. Time since disturbance is a key intermediate determinant that aided the assessment of disturbance-driven carbon emissions and removals legacies. When a recent disturbance was detected, time since disturbance can be directly determined by remote sensing-derived disturbance products; and if not, time since last stand-clearing was inferred from remote sensing-derived 30 m biomass map and field inventory-derived species-specific biomass regrowth curves. Net ecosystem productivity (NEP) was further mapped based on carbon stock and flux trajectories that described how NEP changes with time following harvest, fire, or bark beetle disturbances of varying severity. Uncertainties from biomass map and forest inventory data were propagated by probabilistic sampling to provide a probabilistic, statistical distribution of stand age and NEP for each forest pixel. We mapped mean, standard deviation and statistical distribution of stand age and NEP at 30 m in the PNW region. Our map indicated a net ecosystem productivity of 5.2 Tg C y−1 for forestlands circa 2010 in the study area, with net uptake in relatively mature (> 24 year old) forests (13.6 Tg C y−1) overwhelming net negative NEP from tracts that have seen recent harvest (−6.4 Tg C y−1), fires (−0.5 Tg C y−1), and bark beetle outbreaks (−1.4 Tg C y−1). The approach will be applied to forestlands in other regions of the conterminous U.S. to advance a more comprehensive monitoring, mapping and reporting the carbon consequences of forest change across the U.S.

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