Mapping tropical forest biomass with radar and spaceborne LiDAR in Lopé National Park, Gabon: overcoming problems of high biomass and persistent cloud

• Main Authors: E. T. A. Mitchard, S. S. Saatchi, L. J. T. White, K. A. Abernethy, K. J. Jeffery, S. L. Lewis, M. Collins, M. A. Lefsky, M. E. Leal, I. H. Woodhouse, P. Meir
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Copernicus Publications 2012-01-01
• Series: Biogeosciences
• Online Access: http://www.biogeosciences.net/9/179/2012/bg-9-179-2012.pdf

Spatially-explicit maps of aboveground biomass are essential for calculating the losses and gains in forest carbon at a regional to national level. The production of such maps across wide areas will become increasingly necessary as international efforts to protect primary forests, such as the REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) mechanism, come into effect, alongside their use for management and research more generally. However, mapping biomass over high-biomass tropical forest is challenging as (1) direct regressions with optical and radar data saturate, (2) much of the tropics is persistently cloud-covered, reducing the availability of optical data, (3) many regions include steep topography, making the use of radar data complex, (5) while LiDAR data does not suffer from saturation, expensive aircraft-derived data are necessary for complete coverage. <br></br> We present a solution to the problems, using a combination of terrain-corrected L-band radar data (ALOS PALSAR), spaceborne LiDAR data (ICESat GLAS) and ground-based data. We map Gabon's Lopé National Park (5000 km²) because it includes a range of vegetation types from savanna to closed-canopy tropical forest, is topographically complex, has no recent contiguous cloud-free high-resolution optical data, and the dense forest is above the saturation point for radar. Our 100 m resolution biomass map is derived from fusing spaceborne LiDAR (7142 ICESat GLAS footprints), 96 ground-based plots (average size 0.8 ha) and an unsupervised classification of terrain-corrected ALOS PALSAR radar data, from which we derive the aboveground biomass stocks of the park to be 78 Tg C (173 Mg C ha⁻¹). This value is consistent with our field data average of 181 Mg C ha⁻¹, from the field plots measured in 2009 covering a total of 78 ha, and which are independent as they were not used for the GLAS-biomass estimation. We estimate an uncertainty of &pm;25% on our carbon stock value for the park. This error term includes uncertainties resulting from the use of a generic tropical allometric equation, the use of GLAS data to estimate Lorey's height, and the necessity of separating the landscape into distinct classes. <br></br> As there is currently no spaceborne LiDAR satellite in operation (GLAS data is available for 2003–2009 only), this methodology is not suitable for change-detection. This research underlines the need for new satellite LiDAR data to provide the potential for biomass-change estimates, although this need will not be met before 2015.