Estimating the contribution from tree plantations to the US forest carbon sink

Matthew E Fagan, NASA, matthew.e.fagan@nasa.gov (Presenter)
Douglas Morton, NASA GSFC, douglas.morton@nasa.gov
Bruce Cook, NASA GSFC, bruce.cook@nasa.gov
Jeffrey Masek, NASA GSFC, jeffrey.g.masek@nasa.gov
Feng Zhao, University of Maryland, College Park, fengzhao@umd.edu
Chengquan Huang, University of Maryland, cqhuang@umd.edu
Hans Erik Andersen, USDA Forest Service, handersen@fs.fed.us
Ross Nelson, NASA GSFC, ross.f.nelson@nasa.gov

The southeastern U.S. is one of the most productive regions in the world for wood pulp and logs, based on large-scale management of pine plantations. Time series of satellite imagery offer a detailed account of forest loss and gain, but the potential contribution of plantation management in the southeast US to the US forest carbon sink has not been quantified. In this study, we combine nearly 3,000 km of airborne remote sensing transects from Goddard’s Lidar, Hyperspectral, and Thermal Airborne Imager (G-LiHT) with Landsat-based estimates of vegetation cover and annual forest cover changes across the southeastern US. Tree plantations were mapped using a combination of structural, spectral, and temporal information derived from G-LiHT LiDAR, the National Land Cover Database, and the Vegetation Change Tracker (VCT) algorithm, respectively. The ability to combine high-resolution (1 m) information from airborne lidar and long time series of Landsat imagery provided unique constraints on the height structure and spatial extent of plantation forests. The space-for-time sampling of plantation forests provided a robust estimate of height growth and carbon accumulation of aboveground biomass in plantations of different ages. By estimating the current contribution of large-scale plantation management in the southeastern U.S. to forest area, this study bounds the potential contribution of regional forest management to the US forest carbon sink.

Presentation Type:  Poster

Session:  Theme 1: Tracking habitat change through new integrative approaches and products   (Mon 1:30 PM)

Associated Project(s): 

• Nelson, Ross: A Lidar-Radar-Optical Data Fusion Approach for Estimating the Aboveground Carbon Stocks of North American Forests: Means and Uncertainties at Regional to Continental Scales ...details

Poster Location ID: 16