Estimating Stand Volume and Above-Ground Biomass of Urban Forests Using LiDAR

Abstract

Abstract:Assessing forest stand conditions in urban and peri-urban areas is essential to support ecosystem service planning and management, as most of the ecosystem services provided are a consequence of forest stand characteristics. However, collecting data for assessing forest stand conditions is time consuming and labor intensive. A plausible approach for addressing this issue is to establish a relationship between in situ measurements of stand characteristics and data from airborne laser scanning (LiDAR). In this study we assessed forest stand volume and above-ground biomass (AGB) in a broadleaved urban forest, using a combination of LiDAR-derived metrics, which takes the form of a forest allometric model. We tested various methods for extracting proxies of basal area (BA) and mean stand height (H) from the LiDAR point-cloud distribution and evaluated the performance of different models in estimating forest stand volume and AGB. The best predictors for both models were the scale parameters of the Weibull distribution of all returns (except the first) (proxy of BA) and the 95th percentile of the distribution of all first returns (proxy of H). The R 2 were 0.81 (p < 0.01) for the stand volume model and 0.77 (p < 0.01) for the AGB model with a RMSE of 23.66 m 3¨h a´1 (23.3%) and 19.59 Mg¨ha´1 (23.9%), respectively. We found that a combination of two LiDAR-derived variables (i.e., proxy of BA and proxy of H), which take the form of a forest allometric model, can be used to estimate stand volume and above-ground biomass in broadleaved urban forest areas. Our results can be compared to other studies conducted using LiDAR in broadleaved forests with similar methods.

Microclimate regulating functions of urban forests in Changchun City (north-east China) and their associations with different factors

“…Recent studies have demonstrated that higher trees have a better regulation capacity in terms of sunlight interception, air temperature and humidity (Giannico et al 2016).…”

Temporal Dynamics of Aerodynamic Canopy Height Derived From Eddy Covariance Momentum Flux Data Across North American Flux Networks

“…Aerodynamic canopy height, despite its potential estimation bias at some tall‐canopy and fetch‐limited sites, successfully captures site‐to‐site variations of canopy heights across a wide range of vegetation types. Recent research campaigns mapping forest canopy height globally using spaceborne LiDAR (e.g., ICESat GLAS) emphasize the importance and needs of a ground‐based canopy height data set for cross comparison with the remotely sensed estimates (Giannico et al, ; Lefsky, ; Simard et al, ). While there is a growing community utilizing ground‐based or airborne LiDAR in obtaining detailed canopy structures at flux tower sites (e.g., Beland et al, ; Cook et al, ), its application is still limited to a small number of sites and sparser, more‐recent temporal coverage.…”

Urban Built-up Areas in Transitional Economies of Southeast Asia: Spatial Extent and Dynamics

“…Though relatively small in area, the extent and change that urbanized lands have on socioeconomic and ecosystem functions, including human health and well-being, climate (e.g., urban heat island), water conservation (e.g., rainfall), air pollution (e.g., PM 2.5 ), biodiversity, ecosystem productivity and carbon cycling [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9], are disproportionate at multiple scales. It has been increasingly recognized that urbanization needs to be considered as a necessary component of studying regional and global change [10].…”