Regional distribution of forest height and biomass from multisensor data fusion

Elevation data acquired from radar interferometry at C-band from SRTM are used in data fusion techniques to estimate regional scale forest height and aboveground live biomass (AGLB) over the state of Maine. Two fusion techniques have been developed to perform post-processing and parameter estimation...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Geophysical Research - Biogeosciences 2010-06, Vol.115 (G2), p.n/a
Main Authors: Yu, Yifan, Saatchi, Sassan, Heath, Linda S., LaPoint, Elizabeth, Myneni, Ranga, Knyazikhin, Yuri
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algorithms
Biomass
Carbon
Deciduous forests
Deciduous trees
Earth Resources And Remote Sensing
Ecosystem biology
Elevation
Evergreen trees
Forest biomass
forest height
Forests
Geobiology
Interferometry
Landsat
Mixed forests
NED
Remote sensing
SRTM
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Summary:Elevation data acquired from radar interferometry at C-band from SRTM are used in data fusion techniques to estimate regional scale forest height and aboveground live biomass (AGLB) over the state of Maine. Two fusion techniques have been developed to perform post-processing and parameter estimations from four data sets: 1 arc sec National Elevation Data (NED), SRTM derived elevation (30 m), Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM) bands (30 m), derived vegetation index (VI) and NLCD2001 land cover map. The first fusion algorithm corrects for missing or erroneous NED data using an iterative interpolation approach and produces distribution of scattering phase centers from SRTM-NED in three dominant forest types of evergreen conifers, deciduous, and mixed stands. The second fusion technique integrates the USDA Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) ground-based plot data to develop an algorithm to transform the scattering phase centers into mean forest height and aboveground biomass. Height estimates over evergreen (R2 = 0.86, P < 0.001; RMSE = 1.1 m) and mixed forests (R2 = 0.93, P < 0.001, RMSE = 0.8 m) produced the best results. Estimates over deciduous forests were less accurate because of the winter acquisition of SRTM data and loss of scattering phase center from tree ]surface interaction. We used two methods to estimate AGLB; algorithms based on direct estimation from the scattering phase center produced higher precision (R2 = 0.79, RMSE = 25 Mg/ha) than those estimated from forest height (R2 = 0.25, RMSE = 66 Mg/ha). We discuss sources of uncertainty and implications of the results in the context of mapping regional and continental scale forest biomass distribution.
ISSN:0148-0227
2169-8953
2156-2202
2169-8961
DOI:10.1029/2009JG000995