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Validation of Canopy Height Profile methodology for small-footprint full-waveform airborne LiDAR data in a discontinuous canopy environment

Fieber, K. D., Davenport, I. J., Tanase, M. A., Ferryman, J. M., Gurney, R. J., Becerra, V. M., Walker, J. P. and Hackerf, J. M. (2015) Validation of Canopy Height Profile methodology for small-footprint full-waveform airborne LiDAR data in a discontinuous canopy environment. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 104. pp. 144-157. ISSN 0924-2716

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To link to this item DOI: 10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2015.03.001

Abstract/Summary

A Canopy Height Profile (CHP) procedure presented in Harding et al. (2001) for large footprint LiDAR data was tested in a closed canopy environment as a way of extracting vertical foliage profiles from LiDAR raw-waveform. In this study, an adaptation of this method to small-footprint data has been shown, tested and validated in an Australian sparse canopy forest at plot- and site-level. Further, the methodology itself has been enhanced by implementing a dataset-adjusted reflectance ratio calculation according to Armston et al. (2013) in the processing chain, and tested against a fixed ratio of 0.5 estimated for the laser wavelength of 1550nm. As a by-product of the methodology, effective leaf area index (LAIe) estimates were derived and compared to hemispherical photography-derived values. To assess the influence of LiDAR aggregation area size on the estimates in a sparse canopy environment, LiDAR CHPs and LAIes were generated by aggregating waveforms to plot- and site-level footprints (plot/site-aggregated) as well as in 5m grids (grid-processed). LiDAR profiles were then compared to leaf biomass field profiles generated based on field tree measurements. The correlation between field and LiDAR profiles was very high, with a mean R2 of 0.75 at plot-level and 0.86 at site-level for 55 plots and the corresponding 11 sites. Gridding had almost no impact on the correlation between LiDAR and field profiles (only marginally improvement), nor did the dataset-adjusted reflectance ratio. However, gridding and the dataset-adjusted reflectance ratio were found to improve the correlation between raw-waveform LiDAR and hemispherical photography LAIe estimates, yielding the highest correlations of 0.61 at plot-level and of 0.83 at site-level. This proved the validity of the approach and superiority of dataset-adjusted reflectance ratio of Armston et al. (2013) over a fixed ratio of 0.5 for LAIe estimation, as well as showed the adequacy of small-footprint LiDAR data for LAIe estimation in discontinuous canopy forests.

Item Type:Article
Refereed:Yes
Divisions:Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Computer Science
ID Code:39690
Uncontrolled Keywords:full-waveform; LiDAR; small-footprint; canopy height profile (CHP); effective leaf area index (LAIe); discontinuous canopy cover
Publisher:Elsevier

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