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...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Remote sensing (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 17; no. 2; p. 320
Main Authors: 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
Language:English
Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.01.2025
Subjects:
Airborne lasers
Algorithms
Artificial satellites in remote sensing
Canopies
Carbon sequestration
Climate change
data collection
data fusion
Datasets
Earth resources technology satellites
Economic indicators
Ecosystems
Environmental protection
Florida
forest canopy
forest health
Forest management
forest structure estimation
Forests
GEDI data
Geographical coordinates
Geospatial data
highlands
Landsat
Lidar
machine learning models
Mapping
Natural disturbance
Optical radar
Precipitation
Radar imaging
Remote sensing
Satellite imagery
Sea level
Sensors
southern forests
Spatial data
Storm damage
Stormwater management
Sustainable forestry
Synthetic aperture radar
Timber
timber production
vegetation
Vegetation mapping
wetlands
United States
Florida
United States > US
ISSN:2072-4292, 2072-4292
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary: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.
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ISSN:2072-4292
2072-4292
DOI:10.3390/rs17020320