Relative Efficiency of ALS and InSAR for Biomass Estimation in a Tanzanian Rainforest

Remote Sensing

Endre Hofstad Hansen²  Terje Gobakken²  Svein Solberg³  Annika Kangas²  Liviu Ene²  Ernest Mauya²  Erik Næsset²  Parth Sarathi Roy¹ 

[1] Department of Ecology and Natural Resource Management, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, P.O. Box 5003, NO-1432 Ås, Norway;;Department of Ecology and Natural Resource Management, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, P.O. Box 5003, NO-1432 Ås, Norway; E-Mails:;Norwegian Forest and Landscape Institute, P.O. Box 115, NO-1431 Ås, Norway; E-Mail:

关键词: ALS;    airborne laser scanning;    LiDAR;    relative efficiency;    tropical rainforest;   

DOI  :  10.3390/rs70809865

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Forest inventories based on field sample surveys, supported by auxiliary remotely sensed data, have the potential to provide transparent and confident estimates of forest carbon stocks required in climate change mitigation schemes such as the REDD+ mechanism. The field plot size is of importance for the precision of carbon stock estimates, and better information of the relationship between plot size and precision can be useful in designing future inventories. Precision estimates of forest biomass estimates developed from 30 concentric field plots with sizes of 700, 900, …, 1900 m², sampled in a Tanzanian rainforest, were assessed in a model-based inference framework. Remotely sensed data from airborne laser scanning (ALS) and interferometric synthetic aperture radio detection and ranging (InSAR) were used as auxiliary information. The findings indicate that larger field plots are relatively more efficient for inventories supported by remotely sensed ALS and InSAR data. A simulation showed that a pure field-based inventory would have to comprise 3.5–6.0 times as many observations for plot sizes of 700–1900 m² to achieve the same precision as an inventory supported by ALS data.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.