Temilola
Fatoyinbo, NASA GSFC, lola.fatoyinbo@nasa.gov
(Presenting)
Marc
Simard, Caltech-JPL, marc.simard@jpl.nasa.gov
Accurately quantifying forest 3-D structure is of great importance for studies of the global carbon cycle and biodiversity. These studies are especially important in Africa, where deforestation rates are high and lack of background data is great. However mapping vegetation structure on a continental scale is of great difficulty from an ecological and methodological point of view. Algorithms to estimate forest extent, structure and biomass are primarily developed for local areas and are difficult to extrapolate on the regional or continental scale. Mangrove forests present an ideal terrain to remotely measure vegetation structure continentally because they grow in low topography regions, have low species and growth form diversity, but have high aboveground biomass vales. In this study, globally available optical (Landsat), InSAR (SRTM) and Lidar (ICEsat/GLAS) data were used to estimate mangrove extent and structure (height and biomass) across continental Africa and Madagascar. We generated mangrove maps from Landsat ETM+ and SRTM for 1999-2000 and combined GLAS with SRTM data to estimate tree height and aboveground biomass. The total mangrove area of Africa was of estimated to be 26639 km2, with 83 % accuracy. The average height across Africa was of 9 m with a root mean square error of 3.8 m. Aboveground biomass ranged from 83 Mg/ha (Somalia) to 270 Mg/ha (Congo) with an average of 113 Mg/ha across the continent. This study provides the first systematic estimates of mangrove area, height and biomass of the African continent and Madagascar. The maps of mangrove extent, height and biomass are available as google earth overlays at http://www-radar.jpl.nasa.gov/coastal/coastal-data/KML/Africa_Mangroves/
Presentation Type: Poster
Poster Session: Ecosystems Science
NASA TE Funded Awards Represented:
Simard, Marc
3D Vegetation Structure using L-band InSAR and Lidar