Tropical Forest Biomass Estimation from Vertical Fourier Transforms of Lidar and InSAR Profiles

Robert Neil Treuhaft, JPL, California Institute of Technology, robert.treuhaft@jpl.nasa.gov (Presenter)
Fabio G. Goncalves, Oregon State University / JPL, fabio.goncalves@jpl.nasa.gov
Jason Drake, USDA Forest Service, jbdrake@mail.ucf.edu
Bruce Chapman, JPL, bruce.d.chapman@nasa.gov
João Roberto Santos, INPE, jroberto@ltid.inpe.br
Paulo MLA Graça, INPA, pmlag@inpa.gov.br
Luciano Vieira Dutra, INPE, dutra@dpi.inpe.br
George H. Purcell, JPL, george.purcell@jpl.nasa.gov

Structural forest biomass estimation from lidar or interferometric SAR (InSAR) has demonstrated better performance than radar-power-based approaches for the higher biomasses (>150 Mg/ha) found in tropical forests. Structural biomass estimation frequently regresses field biomass to some function of forest height. With airborne, 25-m footprint lidar data and fixed-baseline C-band InSAR data over tropical wet forests of La Selva Biological Station, Costa Rica, we compare the use of Fourier transforms of vertical profiles at a few frequencies to the intrinsically low-frequency “average height”. RMS scatters of Fourier-estimated biomass about field-measured biomass improved by 40% and 20% over estimates base on average height from lidar and fixed-baseline InSAR, respectively. Vertical wavelengths between 14 and 100 m were found to best estimate biomass.

Presentation Type:  Poster

Session:  Other   (Wed 10:00 AM)

Associated Project(s): 

• Treuhaft, Robert: The Performance of Structure and Biomass Estimation from InSAR 3-D Vegetation Missions at L-band over Tropical Forests ...details

Poster Location ID: 257