a sample design for globally consistent biomass estimation using lidar data from the geoscience laser altimeter system (glas)样本设计全球一致的生物量估算使用激光雷达数据的地学激光高度计系统(格拉斯).pdfVIP

Healey et al. Carbon Balance and Management 2012, 7:10 /content/7/1/10 RESEARCH Open Access A sample design for globally consistent biomass estimation using lidar data from the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) 1* 1 2 3 4 1 Sean P Healey , Paul L Patterson , Sassan Saatchi , Michael A Lefsky , Andrew J Lister and Elizabeth A Freeman Abstract Background: Lidar height data collected by the Geosciences Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) from 2002 to 2008 has the potential to form the basis of a globally consistent sample-based inventory of forest biomass. GLAS lidar return data were collected globally in spatially discrete full waveform “shots,” which have been shown to be strongly correlated with aboveground forest biomass. Relationships observed at spatially coincident field plots may be used to model biomass at all GLAS shots, and well-established methods of model-based inference may then be used to estimate biomass and variance for specific spatial domains. However, the spatial pattern of GLAS acquisition is neither random across the surface of the earth nor is it identifiable with any particular systematic design. Undefined sample properties therefore hinder the use of GLAS in global forest sampling. Results: We propose a method of identifying a subset of the GLAS data which can justifiably be treated as a simple random sample in model-based biomass estimation. The relatively uniform spatial distribution and locally arbitrary positioning of the resulting sample is similar to the design used by the US national forest inventory (NFI). We demonstrated model-based estimation using a sample of GLAS data in the US state of California, where our estimate of bio