scholarly journals Comparison of Statistical Modelling Approaches for Estimating Tropical Forest Aboveground Biomass Stock and Reporting Their Changes in Low-Intensity Logging Areas Using Multi-Temporal LiDAR Data

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 1498 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franciel Eduardo Rex ◽  
Carlos Alberto Silva ◽  
Ana Paula Dalla Corte ◽  
Carine Klauberg ◽  
Midhun Mohan ◽  
...  

Accurately quantifying forest aboveground biomass (AGB) is one of the most significant challenges in remote sensing, and is critical for understanding global carbon sequestration. Here, we evaluate the effectiveness of airborne LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) for monitoring AGB stocks and change (ΔAGB) in a selectively logged tropical forest in eastern Amazonia. Specifically, we compare results from a suite of different modelling methods with extensive field data. The calibration AGB values were derived from 85 square field plots sized 50 × 50 m field plots established in 2014 and which were estimated using airborne LiDAR data acquired in 2012, 2014, and 2017. LiDAR-derived metrics were selected based upon Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and used to estimate AGB stock and change. The statistical approaches were: ordinary least squares regression (OLS), and nine machine learning approaches: random forest (RF), several variations of k-nearest neighbour (k-NN), support vector machine (SVM), and artificial neural networks (ANN). Leave-one-out cross-validation (LOOCV) was used to compare performance based upon root mean square error (RMSE) and mean difference (MD). The results show that OLS had the best performance with an RMSE of 46.94 Mg/ha (19.7%) and R² = 0.70. RF, SVM, and ANN were adequate, and all approaches showed RMSE ≤54.48 Mg/ha (22.89%). Models derived from k-NN variations all showed RMSE ≥64.61 Mg/ha (27.09%). The OLS model was thus selected to map AGB across the time-series. The mean (±sd—standard deviation) predicted AGB stock at the landscape level was 229.10 (±232.13) Mg/ha in 2012, 258.18 (±106.53) in 2014, and 240.34 (sd ± 177.00) Mg/ha in 2017, showing the effect of forest growth in the first period and logging in the second period. In most cases, unlogged areas showed higher AGB stocks than logged areas. Our methods showed an increase in AGB in unlogged areas and detected small changes from reduced-impact logging (RIL) activities occurring after 2012. We also detected that the AGB increase in areas logged before 2012 was higher than in unlogged areas. Based on our findings, we expect our study could serve as a basis for programs such as REDD+ and assist in detecting and understanding AGB changes caused by selective logging activities in tropical forests.

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 1101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiandie Jiang ◽  
Guiying Li ◽  
Dengsheng Lu ◽  
Erxue Chen ◽  
Xinliang Wei

Species-rich subtropical forests have high carbon sequestration capacity and play important roles in regional and global carbon regulation and climate changes. A timely investigation of the spatial distribution characteristics of subtropical forest aboveground biomass (AGB) is essential to assess forest carbon stocks. Lidar (light detection and ranging) is regarded as the most reliable data source for accurate estimation of forest AGB. However, previous studies that have used lidar data have often beenbased on a single model developed from the relationships between lidar-derived variables and AGB, ignoring the variability of this relationship in different forest types. Although stratification of forest types has been proven to be effective for improving AGB estimation, how to stratify forest types and how many strata to use are still unclear. This research aims to improve forest AGB estimation through exploring suitable stratification approaches based on lidar and field survey data. Different stratification schemes including non-stratification and stratifications based on forest types and forest stand structures were examined. The AGB estimation models were developed using linear regression (LR) and random forest (RF) approaches. The results indicate the following: (1) Proper stratifications improved AGB estimation and reduced the effect of under- and overestimation problems; (2) the finer forest type strata generated higher accuracy of AGB estimation but required many more sample plots, which were often unavailable; (3) AGB estimation based on stratification of forest stand structures was similar to that based on five forest types, implying that proper stratification reduces the number of sample plots needed; (4) the optimal AGB estimation model and stratification scheme varied, depending on forest types; and (5) the RF algorithm provided better AGB estimation for non-stratification than the LR algorithm, but the LR approach provided better estimation with stratification. Results from this research provide new insights on how to properly conduct forest stratification for AGB estimation modeling, which is especially valuable in tropical and subtropical regions with complex forest types.


FLORESTA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 1873
Author(s):  
Juliana Marchesan ◽  
Elisiane Alba ◽  
Mateus Sabadi Schuh ◽  
José Augusto Spiazzi Favarin ◽  
Rudiney Soares Pereira

The tropical forest is characterized by expressive biomass and stores high amounts of carbon, which is an important variable for climate monitoring. Thus, studies aiming to analyze suitable methods to predict biomass are crucial, especially in the tropics, where dense vegetation makes modeling difficult. Thus, the objective of the present study was to estimate aboveground biomass (AGB) in a tropical forest area with selective logging in the Amazon forest using the Random Forest (RF) machine learning algorithm and LiDAR data. For this, 85 sample units were used at Fazenda Cauaxi, in the municipality of Paragominas, Pará State. LiDAR data were collected in 2014 and made available by the Sustainable Landscapes Project. The software R was used for data analysis. Among the LiDAR metrics, the average height was used as it had the greatest significance to compose the model. The model presented a pseudo R² of 0.69 (value obtained by the RF), Spearman's Correlation Coefficient of 0.80, RMSE of 47.05 Mg.ha-1 (19.84%), and Bias of 2.06 Mg.ha-1 (0.87%). With the results, it was possible to infer that the average height metric was enough to estimate AGB in a tropical forest with selective logging, in addition, the RF algorithm the biomass to be estimated, which can be used to assist in monitoring and action management in areas of selective logging and serve as a basis for climate change mitigation policies.


Beskydy ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olga Brovkina ◽  
František Zemek ◽  
Tomáš Fabiánek

The study presents three models for estimation of forest aboveground biomass (AGB) for plot level using different categories of airborne data. The first and the second models estimate AGB from metrics of airborne LiDAR data. The third model estimates AGB from integration of metrics of airborne hyperspectral and LiDAR data. The results are compared with plot level biomass estimated from field measurements. The results show that the best AGB estimate is obtained from the model utilizing a fusion of hyperspectral and LiDAR metrics. Study results expand existing research on the applicability of airborne hyperspectral and LiDAR datasets for AGB assessment. It evidences the efficiency of using a predicting model based on hyperspectral and LiDAR data for study area.


Author(s):  
Yanqiu Xing ◽  
Sai Qiu ◽  
Jianhua Ding ◽  
Jing Tian

Estimation of forest aboveground biomass (AGB) is a critical challenge for understanding the global carbon cycle because it dominates the dynamics of the terrestrial carbon cycle. Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) system has a unique capability for estimating accurately forest canopy height, which has a direct relationship and can provide better understanding to the forest AGB. The Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) onboard the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) is the first polarorbiting LiDAR instrument for global observations of Earth, and it has been widely used for extracting forest AGB with footprints of nominally 70&thinsp;m in diameter on the earth's surface. However, the GLAS footprints are discrete geographically, and thus it has been restricted to produce the regional full coverage of forest AGB. To overcome the limit of discontinuity, the Hyper Spectral Imager (HSI) of HJ-1A with 115 bands was combined with GLAS waveforms to predict the regional forest AGB in the study. Corresponding with the field investigation in Wangqing of Changbai Mountain, China, the GLAS waveform metrics were derived and employed to establish the AGB model, which was used further for estimating the AGB within GLAS footprints. For HSI imagery, the Minimum Noise Fraction (MNF) method was used to decrease noise and reduce the dimensionality of spectral bands, and consequently the first three of MNF were able to offer almost 98% spectral information and qualified to regress with the GLAS estimated AGB. Afterwards, the support vector regression (SVR) method was employed in the study to establish the relationship between GLAS estimated AGB and three of HSI MNF (i.e. <i>MNF1</i>, <i>MNF2</i> and <i>MNF3</i>), and accordingly the full covered regional forest AGB map was produced. The results showed that the adj.R<sup>2</sup> and RMSE of SVR-AGB models were 0.75 and 4.68&thinsp;t&thinsp;hm<sup>&minus;2</sup> for broadleaf forests, 0.73 and 5.39&thinsp;t&thinsp;hm<sup>&minus;2</sup> for coniferous forests and 0.71 and 6.15&thinsp;t&thinsp;hm<sup>&minus;2</sup> for mixed forests respectively. The full covered regional forest AGB map of the study area had 0.62 of accuracy and 11.11&thinsp;t&thinsp;hm<sup>&minus;2</sup> of RMSE. The study demonstrated that it holds great potential to achieve the full covered regional forest AGB distribution with higher accuracy by combing LiDAR data and hyperspectral imageries.


2018 ◽  
Vol 139 ◽  
pp. 228-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Melendy ◽  
S.C. Hagen ◽  
F.B. Sullivan ◽  
T.R.H. Pearson ◽  
S.M. Walker ◽  
...  

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 532 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luodan Cao ◽  
Jianjun Pan ◽  
Ruijuan Li ◽  
Jialin Li ◽  
Zhaofu Li

Sensors ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (11) ◽  
pp. 3960 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Castagno ◽  
Ella Atkins

Geographic information systems (GIS) provide accurate maps of terrain, roads, waterways, and building footprints and heights. Aircraft, particularly small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), can exploit this and additional information such as building roof structure to improve navigation accuracy and safely perform contingency landings particularly in urban regions. However, building roof structure is not fully provided in maps. This paper proposes a method to automatically label building roof shape from publicly available GIS data. Satellite imagery and airborne LiDAR data are processed and manually labeled to create a diverse annotated roof image dataset for small to large urban cities. Multiple convolutional neural network (CNN) architectures are trained and tested, with the best performing networks providing a condensed feature set for support vector machine and decision tree classifiers. Satellite image and LiDAR data fusion is shown to provide greater classification accuracy than using either data type alone. Model confidence thresholds are adjusted leading to significant increases in models precision. Networks trained from roof data in Witten, Germany and Manhattan (New York City) are evaluated on independent data from these cities and Ann Arbor, Michigan.


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