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Estimating Canopy Gap Fraction Using ICESat GLAS within Australian Forest Ecosystems

Craig Mahoney, Chris Hopkinson, Natascha Kljun Orcid Logo, Eva van Gorsel

Remote Sensing, Volume: 9, Issue: 1, Start page: 59

Swansea University Author: Natascha Kljun Orcid Logo

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DOI (Published version): 10.3390/rs9010059

Abstract

Spaceborne laser altimetry waveform estimates of canopy Gap Fraction (GF) vary withrespect to discrete return airborne equivalents due to their greater sensitivity to reflectance differencesbetween canopy and ground surfaces resulting from differences in footprint size, energy thresholding,noise cha...

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Published in: Remote Sensing
ISSN: 2072-4292
Published: 2017
Online Access: Check full text

URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa31620
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Abstract: Spaceborne laser altimetry waveform estimates of canopy Gap Fraction (GF) vary withrespect to discrete return airborne equivalents due to their greater sensitivity to reflectance differencesbetween canopy and ground surfaces resulting from differences in footprint size, energy thresholding,noise characteristics and sampling geometry. Applying scaling factors to either the ground or canopyportions of waveforms has successfully circumvented this issue, but not at large scales. This studydevelops a method to scale spaceborne altimeter waveforms by identifying which remotely-sensedvegetation, terrain and environmental attributes are best suited to predicting scaling factors basedon an independent measure of importance. The most important attributes were identified as: soilphosphorus and nitrogen contents, vegetation height, MODIS vegetation continuous fields productand terrain slope. Unscaled and scaled estimates of GF are compared to corresponding ALS datafor all available data and an optimized subset, where the latter produced most encouraging results(R2 = 0.89, RMSE = 0.10). This methodology shows potential for successfully refining estimates ofGF at large scales and identifies the most suitable attributes for deriving appropriate scaling factors.Large-scale active sensor estimates of GF can establish a baseline from which future monitoringinvestigations can be initiated via upcoming Earth Observation missions.
Keywords: vegetation; remote sensing; forestry; LiDAR
College: Faculty of Science and Engineering
Issue: 1
Start Page: 59