Estimation of tropical forest structural characteristics using large-footprint lidar

Drake, Jason B.; Dubayah, Ralph; Clark, David B.; Knox, Robert G.; Blair, J. B.; Hofton, M. A.; Chazdon, Robin L.; Weishampel, John F.; Prince, Stephen D.

doi:10.1016/s0034-4257(01)00281-4

Cited by 530 publications

(407 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Rather than providing several range measurements for each laser pulse, these instruments typically record the full time-resolved laser pulse backscatter from throughout the canopy to the underlying dry land surface (Blair and Hofton, 1999;Fowler, 2001). Results from experiments using these large-footprint temporal waveformresolving lidars have confirmed capabilities to estimate the biomass and structural attributes of tall temperate and dense tropical forests (Drake et al, 2002).…”

Section: Emergent Coastal Land Applicationsmentioning

confidence: 69%

Synergy of Airborne Digital Camera and Lidar Data to Map Coastal Dune Vegetation

Kempeneers¹,

Deronde

Provoost

et al. 2009

Journal of Coastal Research

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Section: Emergent Coastal Land Applicationsmentioning

confidence: 69%

Synergy of Airborne Digital Camera and Lidar Data to Map Coastal Dune Vegetation

Kempeneers¹,

Deronde

Provoost

et al. 2009

Journal of Coastal Research

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“…Lidar scanning technologies send beams through the canopy and measure the forest structure (e.g., leaf and branch density as the emitted beams interact with them) (32). Hereby, the density of signals returned at a specific height may be comparable to the observed pattern of leaf area density across height (31).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The structure of tropical forests and sphere packings

Taubert

Jahn

Dobner

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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The search for simple principles underlying the complex architecture of ecological communities such as forests still challenges ecological theorists. We use tree diameter distributions-fundamental for deriving other forest attributes-to describe the structure of tropical forests. Here we argue that tree diameter distributions of natural tropical forests can be explained by stochastic packing of tree crowns representing a forest crown packing system: a method usually used in physics or chemistry. We demonstrate that tree diameter distributions emerge accurately from a surprisingly simple set of principles that include site-specific tree allometries, random placement of trees, competition for space, and mortality. The simple static model also successfully predicted the canopy structure, revealing that most trees in our two studied forests grow up to 30-50 m in height and that the highest packing density of about 60% is reached between the 25-and 40-m height layer. Our approach is an important step toward identifying a minimal set of processes responsible for generating the spatial structure of tropical forests.tropical forest | forest size structure | stochastic geometry | tree crown packing | leaf area F orests are one of the world's best investigated ecosystems (1-4). However, despite all of the studies devoted to forests, mechanistic connections among important features of forest physiognomy are not fully understood. Of crucial importance for this are tree diameter distributions, which have been used for decades in ecology and forestry to characterize the state of forests. Tree diameter distributions are available for many forests of the world and allow together with tree allometries prediction of other important forest attributes like leaf area (5), basal area (6), above-ground biomass (7), tree density, and the presence or absence of disturbances (8). Tropical forests usually include many small trees and far fewer large ones (1, 9). Diameter distributions can also be predicted from dynamic forest models (10-13) in which the forest structure emerges from the interplay between the dynamic processes of mortality, regeneration, competition, and growth.In this study, we argue that tree diameter distributions of natural tropical forests can be predicted by stochastic packing theory-a method usually used in physics or chemistry-together with sitespecific tree allometries. Packing systems have a long history of use across a wide range of disciplines, going back as far as Kepler's analysis of regular packing of spheres (i.e., with a maximum of 74% filled volume). Irregular stochastic packing of spheres has been analyzed in the last decades and shows lower maximal packing densities (e.g., jammed sphere packing systems in physics, with 55-64% filled volume) (14, 15). We show here that simple principles of stochastic packing theory together with tree allometries and other simple structural rules allow for an accurate prediction of observed tree diameter distributions and related structural attributes for two tropical for...

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“…61), suggesting that tree height has decisive influence due to tree architecture (height is much larger than diameter). While for temperate and boreal forests, based on sitedata analyses, tree height is found to be a good indicator for carbon stocks at larger scales 36,76 , the interrelation is less straightforward, but still strong, for tropical forests, due to the high structural complexity, species variability, and variations in wood density, stem diameter, and the number of trees per area, as well as due to environmental factors 77,78 . As we use tree-height information only for downscaling national carbon stock data to the grid, rather than to calculate carbon stocks from allometric relationships, the related problems-that is, the heterogeneity of wood density and species 16 -are less important sources of uncertainty in our study.…”

Section: Carbon Stock Of the Actual Vegetation (Scact )mentioning

confidence: 99%

Biomass turnover time in terrestrial ecosystems halved by land use

Erb¹,

Fetzel²,

et al. 2016

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The terrestrial carbon cycle is not well quantified1. Biomass turnover time is a crucial parameter in the global carbon cycle2–4, and contributes to the feedback between the terrestrial carbon cycle and climate2–7. Biomass turnover time varies substantially in time and space, but its determinants are not well known8,9, making predictions of future global carbon cycle dynamics uncertain5,10–13. Land use—the sum of activities that aim at enhancing terrestrial ecosystem services14—alters plant growth15 and reduces biomass stocks16, and is hence expected to aect biomass turnover. Here we explore land-use-induced alterations of biomass turnover at the global scale by comparing the biomass turnover of the actual vegetation with that of a hypothetical vegetation state with no land use under current climate conditions. We find that, in the global average, biomass turnover is 1.9 times faster with land use. This acceleration aects all biomes roughly equally, but with large dierences between land-use types. Land conversion, for example fromforests to agricultural fields, is responsible for59%of the acceleration; the use of forestsand natural grazing land accounts for 26% and 15% respectively. Reductions in biomass stocks are partly compensated by reductions in net primary productivity. We conclude that land use significantly and systematically aects the fundamental trade-off between carbon turnover and carbon stocks

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Estimation of tropical forest structural characteristics using large-footprint lidar

Cited by 530 publications

References 44 publications

Synergy of Airborne Digital Camera and Lidar Data to Map Coastal Dune Vegetation

Synergy of Airborne Digital Camera and Lidar Data to Map Coastal Dune Vegetation

The structure of tropical forests and sphere packings

Biomass turnover time in terrestrial ecosystems halved by land use

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