Statewide Forest Canopy Cover Mapping of Florida Using Synergistic Integration of Spaceborne LiDAR, SAR, and Optical Imagery

Southern U.S. forests are essential for carbon storage and timber production but are increasingly impacted by natural disturbances, highlighting the need to understand their dynamics and recovery. Canopy cover is a key indicator of forest health and resilience. Advances in remote sensing, such as NA...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Veröffentlicht in:Remote sensing (Basel, Switzerland) Jg. 17; H. 2; S. 320
Hauptverfasser: Schlickmann, Monique Bohora, Bueno, Inacio Thomaz, Valle, Denis, Hammond, William M., Prichard, Susan J., Hudak, Andrew T., Klauberg, Carine, Karasinski, Mauro Alessandro, Brock, Kody Melissa, Rocha, Kleydson Diego, Xia, Jinyi, Vieira Leite, Rodrigo, Higuchi, Pedro, da Silva, Ana Carolina, Maximo da Silva, Gabriel, Cova, Gina R., Silva, Carlos Alberto
Format: Journal Article
Sprache:Englisch
Veröffentlicht: Basel MDPI AG 01.01.2025
Schlagworte:
ISSN:2072-4292, 2072-4292
Online-Zugang:Volltext
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:Southern U.S. forests are essential for carbon storage and timber production but are increasingly impacted by natural disturbances, highlighting the need to understand their dynamics and recovery. Canopy cover is a key indicator of forest health and resilience. Advances in remote sensing, such as NASA’s GEDI spaceborne LiDAR, enable more precise mapping of canopy cover. Although GEDI provides accurate data, its limited spatial coverage restricts large-scale assessments. To address this, we combined GEDI with Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), and optical imagery (Sentinel-1 GRD and Landsat–Sentinel Harmonized (HLS)) data to create a comprehensive canopy cover map for Florida. Using a random forest algorithm, our model achieved an R2 of 0.69, RMSD of 0.17, and MD of 0.001, based on out-of-bag samples for internal validation. Geographic coordinates and the red spectral channel emerged as the most influential predictors. External validation with airborne laser scanning (ALS) data across three sites yielded an R2 of 0.70, RMSD of 0.29, and MD of −0.22, confirming the model’s accuracy and robustness in unseen areas. Statewide analysis showed lower canopy cover in southern versus northern Florida, with wetland forests exhibiting higher cover than upland sites. This study demonstrates the potential of integrating multiple remote sensing datasets to produce accurate vegetation maps, supporting forest management and sustainability efforts in Florida.
Bibliographie:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 14
content type line 23
ISSN:2072-4292
2072-4292
DOI:10.3390/rs17020320