Lidar remote sensing of above-ground biomass in three 2244 A.T. Hudak et al. / Remote Sensingbiomes. Global Ecology and Biogeography

ABSTRACT and coincident field measurements of above-ground biomass Estimation of the amount of carbon stored in forests is a key challenge for understanding the global carbon cycle, one which remote sensing is expected to help address. However, estimation of carbon storage in moderate to high biomass forests is difficult for conventional optical and radar sensors. Lidar (light detection and ranging) instruments measure the vertical structure of forests and thus hold at sites in the temperate deciduous, temperate coniferous, and boreal coniferous biomes. A single regression for all three sites is compared with equations derived for each site individually. The single equation explains 84 % of variance in above-ground biomass (P c 0.0001) and shows no statistically significant bias in its predictions for any individual site. great promise for remotely sensing the quantity and spatial Key words above-ground biomass, biomass measurement, organization of forest biomass. In this study, we compare carbon storage, global carbon cycle, forest biomass, interbiome the relationships between lidar-measured canopy structure comparison, lidar remote sensing, SLICER sensor