A study of forest biomass estimates from lidar in the northern temperate forests of New England

Quantification of global carbon storage, carbon flux and disturbance in forested regions is of critical importance to refining our understanding of ecosystem processes, climate modeling and climate change. Remote sensing instruments, such as lidar and radar provide a means of obtaining highly accurate and well resolved biomass estimates over global scales. This has sparked interest in mission concepts such as DESDynI. One of the core objectives of the proposed DESDynI mission was global carbon accounting and monitoring through a combination of lidar and radar measurements. In this article, the relationship between field biomass and lidar metrics is analyzed using data from coordinated field measurements and lidar overflights at the Harvard and Howland Forests in North-Eastern United States to assess the performance of a potential biomass mapping instrument. Results show that the performance of lidar estimates of biomass vary significantly between the two sites even though they belong to the same northern temperate forest ecoregion. An attempt is made to isolate the reasons behind the dissimilarities. While RMS errors as low as 30 tons/ha can be seen, these are limited to biomass ranges of up to 300 tons/ha. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.