Calculating forest biomass with lidar & radar

Research activities combining lidar and radar remote sensing have increased in recent years. The main focus in combining lidar-radar forest remote sensing has been on the retrieval of the aboveground biomass (AGB). AGB has been identified as a primary variable related to carbon cycle in land ecosystems. 

This European-based study summarises research combining lidar and radar in the estimation of forest AGB. The most promising prospects for combining lidar and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) may be in large-area applications and, in particular, improving SAR-based AGB estimation with lidar digital elevation models or upscaling accurate lidar metrics to large areas with SAR data. 

The state-of-the-art development in joint lidar-radar studies shows the potential for continuous global biomass mapping with improved accuracy.

Click here for source (MDPI)

Photo credit: Finnish Geospatial Research Institute