HR: 09:30h
AN: C21B-07    [Abstracts]
TI: Estimating forest canopy height from Geoscience Laser Altimeter System waveforms and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission digital elevation models
AU: * Lefsky, M A
EM: lefsky@cnr.colostate.edu
AF: Colorado State University, Campus Delivery 1472, Fort Collins, OR 80523 United States
AU: Harding, D J
EM: David.J.Harding@nasa.gov
AF: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Geodynamics Branch Mail Code 921, Greenbelt, MD 20771 United States
AU: Cohen, W B
EM: warren.cohen@oregonstate.edu
AF: USDA Forest Service Forestry Sciences Laboratory, Forestry Sciences Laboratory Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97333 United States
AU: Keller, M
EM: lba.ecology@unh.edu
AF: USDA Forest Service Complex Systems Research Center, Morse Hall University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824 United States
AB: Although the exchange of carbon between the atmosphere and forested ecosystems is a vital component of the global carbon cycle, it is a portion of the cycle that is not well-characterized or well-understood. Lidar remote sensing has a unique capability for estimating forest canopy height, which has a direct and increasingly well understood relationship to aboveground carbon storage. While the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) on the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite has collected an unparalleled data set of lidar waveforms over terrestrial targets, processing of GLAS data to create reliable estimates of forest height is complicated by elements of sensor design related to its primary mission-the topographic mapping of the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica. In this research we demonstrate a straightforward method utilizing Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data to correct for the broadening of collected waveforms due to sloped ground surfaces- a major complication to using the GLAS data for land surface applications. Using corrected waveforms, we then demonstrate the potential applicability of GLAS data to both carbon cycle and fire management questions. To date GLAS has transmitted over 540 million globally-distributed laser pulses. This data set is an important and unique source of information on global forest canopy height and aboveground biomass.
DE: 9350 North America
DE: 9360 South America
DE: 1615 Biogeochemical processes (4805)
DE: 1640 Remote sensing
DE: 0400 Biogeosciences
SC: Cryosphere [C]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting