Characterizing Spatial Pattern and Heterogeneity of Pine Forests in North Carolina’s Coastal Plain using LiDAR

Forest ecosystems are often characterized by their spatial pattern, structure, and heterogeneity. A significant portion of the variability and texture within forests can be attributed to the heterogeneity of a forest’s canopy structure. Canopy structure influences important forest processes, which in turn, influence associations between animals and these particular forested habitats. Methods for quantifying these aspects of forest structural components exist, but have been largely unexplored for broad extents. Thus, remote sensing tools that directly characterize these attributes of habitat structure would be beneficial for management activities and conservation planning. LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) is such a tool, as an active remote sensing technology that provides fine-grained information about the three-dimensional structure of ecosystems across a broad spatial extent. This project assesses the feasibility of using the state-wide North Carolina Floodplain Mapping LiDAR dataset to differentiate between the structural components of evergreen forest types in North Carolina’s coastal plain. Vertical structure and spatial patterns of vertical structure were quantified using geospatial measures such as semivariogram / correlograms, lacunarity analysis