Conveners
Forestry I: Modelling and Retrieval
- Marco Lavalle (NASA JPL)
- Carlos López-Martínez (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya)
The Climate Change Initiative (CCI) Biomass project foresees the generation of forest aboveground biomass (AGB) estimates for several years between 2005 and 2022 at high resolution and globally. This is a challenging task, as accurately measuring the organic mass stored in forests relies on mathematical models applied to observations, either near or far-field. The difficulty lies in achieving...
Current remote sensing based approaches for forest biomass estimation evolve around the use of allometric relationships at different spatial and temporal scales. Three main input parameters are used for the biomass estimation: the tree height, either at the individual level, or at the respective resolution cell size, the allometric factor and the allometric exponent. This formula for the...
The global dry tropics are currently the largest, most sensitive, and fastest increasing component of the land carbon sink, but proper characterization of their role requires accurate estimates of the forest processes occurring within this region. L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) observations are currently our best option to consistently map these processes: i) they are available globally...
Given its unique penetration capabilities and sensitivity to woody elements, radar remote sensing techniques at P and L bands are certainly the most promising tools for wide scale retrieval of forest parameters. Nonetheless, the radar signal sensitivity is prone to multifactorial
effects, and the retrieval methods (mostly correlative or network based) are often limited by an insufficient...
