Highly Local Model Calibration with a New GEDI LiDAR Asset on Google Earth Engine Reduces Landsat Forest Height Signal Saturation

Remote Sensing - Tập 12 Số 17 - Trang 2840
Sean P. Healey1, Zhiqiang Yang1, Noel Gorelick2, Simon Ilyushchenko3
1US Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station, Ogden, UT 84401, USA
2Google Inc., Google Switzerland, 8002 Zurich, Switzerland
3Google Inc., Mountain View, CA 94043, USA

Tóm tắt

While Landsat has proved to be effective for monitoring many elements of forest condition and change, the platform has well-documented limitations in measuring forest structure, the vertical distribution of the canopy. This is important because structure determines several key ecosystem functions, including: carbon storage; habitat suitability; and timber volume. Canopy structure is directly measured by LiDAR, and it should be possible to train Landsat structure models at a highly local scale with the dense, global sample of full waveform LiDAR observations collected by NASA’s Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI). Local models are expected to perform better because: (a) such models may take advantage of localized correlations between structure and canopy surface reflectance; and (b) to the extent that models revert to the mean of the calibration data due to a lack of discrimination, local models will revert to a more representative mean. We tested Landsat-based relative height predictions using a new GEDI asset on Google Earth Engine, described here. Mean prediction error declined by 23% and important prediction biases at the extremes of the range of canopy height dropped as model calibration became more local, minimizing forest structure signal saturation commonly associated with Landsat and other passive optical sensors. Our results suggest that Landsat-based maps of structural variables such as height and biomass may substantially benefit from the kind of local calibration that GEDI’s dense sample of LiDAR data supports.

Từ khóa


Tài liệu tham khảo

Cohen, 2004, Landsat’s Role in Ecological Applications of Remote Sensing, Bioscience, 54, 535, 10.1641/0006-3568(2004)054[0535:LRIEAO]2.0.CO;2

Kennedy, 2010, Detecting trends in forest disturbance and recovery using yearly Landsat time series: 1. LandTrendr—Temporal segmentation algorithms, Remote Sens. Environ., 114, 2897, 10.1016/j.rse.2010.07.008

Lu, D., Chen, Q., Wang, G., Moran, E., Batistella, M., Zhang, M., Vaglio Laurin, G., and Saah, D. (2012). Aboveground Forest Biomass Estimation with Landsat and LiDAR Data and Uncertainty Analysis of the Estimates. Int. J. For. Res., 2012.

Carreiras, 2017, Mapping major land cover types and retrieving the age of secondary forests in the Brazilian Amazon by combining single-date optical and radar remote sensing data, Remote Sens. Environ., 194, 16, 10.1016/j.rse.2017.03.016

Avitabile, 2012, Capabilities and limitations of Landsat and land cover data for aboveground woody biomass estimation of Uganda, Remote Sens. Environ., 117, 366, 10.1016/j.rse.2011.10.012

Freitas, 2005, Relationships between forest structure and vegetation indices in Atlantic Rainforest, For. Ecol. Manag., 218, 353, 10.1016/j.foreco.2005.08.036

Bawa, 2002, Assessing biodiversity from space: An example from the Western Ghats, India, Ecol. Soc., 6, 7

Chander, 2009, Summary of current radiometric calibration coefficients for Landsat MSS, TM, ETM+, and EO-1 ALI sensors, Remote Sens. Environ., 113, 893, 10.1016/j.rse.2009.01.007

Powell, 2010, Quantification of live aboveground forest biomass dynamics with Landsat time-series and field inventory data: A comparison of empirical modeling approaches, Remote Sens. Environ., 114, 1053, 10.1016/j.rse.2009.12.018

Song, 2016, Characterizing the magnitude, timing and duration of urban growth from time series of Landsat-based estimates of impervious cover, Remote Sens. Environ., 175, 1, 10.1016/j.rse.2015.12.027

Healey, 2006, Application of two regression-based methods to estimate the effects of partial harvest on forest structure using Landsat data, Remote Sens. Environ., 101, 115, 10.1016/j.rse.2005.12.006

McRoberts, 2006, A model-based approach to estimating forest area, Remote Sens. Environ., 103, 56, 10.1016/j.rse.2006.03.005

Saarela, S., Holm, S., Healey, S.P., Andersen, H.E., Petersson, H., Prentius, W., Patterson, P.L., Næsset, E., Gregoire, T.G., and Ståhl, G. (2018). Generalized hierarchical model-based estimation for aboveground biomass assessment using GEDI and landsat data. Remote Sens., 10.

Ståhl, G., Saarela, S., Schnell, S., Holm, S., Breidenbach, J., Healey, S.P., Patterson, P.L., Magnussen, S., Næsset, E., and McRoberts, R.E. (2016). Use of models in large-area forest surveys: Comparing model-assisted, model-based and hybrid estimation. For. Ecosyst., 3.

Cohen, 1995, Estimating the age and structure of forests in a multi-ownership landscape of western oregon, U.S.A, Int. J. Remote Sens., 16, 721, 10.1080/01431169508954436

Steininger, 2000, Satellite estimation of tropical secondary forest above-ground biomass: Data from Brazil and Bolivi, Int. J. Remote Sens., 21, 1139, 10.1080/014311600210119

Zhao, P., Lu, D., Wang, G., Wu, C., Huang, Y., and Yu, S. (2016). Examining spectral reflectance saturation in landsat imagery and corresponding solutions to improve forest aboveground biomass estimation. Remote Sens., 8.

Foody, 2003, Predictive relations of tropical forest biomass from Landsat TM data and their transferability between regions, Remote Sens. Environ., 85, 463, 10.1016/S0034-4257(03)00039-7

Chi, H., Sun, G., Huang, J., Li, R., Ren, X., Ni, W., and Fu, A. (2017). Estimation of forest aboveground biomass in Changbai Mountain region using ICESat/GLAS and Landsat/TM data. Remote Sens., 9.

Baccini, 2012, Estimated carbon dioxide emissions from tropical deforestation improved by carbon-density maps, Nat. Clim. Chang., 358, 230

Potapov, 2019, Annual continuous fields of woody vegetation structure in the Lower Mekong region from 2000–2017 Landsat time-series, Remote Sens. Environ., 232, 111278, 10.1016/j.rse.2019.111278

Dubayah, 2020, The Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation: High-Resolution laser ranging of the Earth’s forests and topography, Sci. Remote Sens., 1, 100002, 10.1016/j.srs.2020.100002

Hancock, 2019, The GEDI Simulator: A Large-Footprint Waveform Lidar Simulator for Calibration and Validation of Spaceborne Missions, Earth Space Sci., 6, 294, 10.1029/2018EA000506

Gorelick, 2017, Google Earth Engine: Planetary-scale geospatial analysis for everyone, Remote Sens. Environ., 202, 18, 10.1016/j.rse.2017.06.031

Dubayah, R., Hofton, M., Blair, J.B., Armston, J., Tang, H., and Luthcke, S. (2020, August 31). GEDI L2A Elevation and Height Metrics Data Global Footprint Level V001. Available online: https://doi.org/10.5067/GEDI/GEDI02_A.001.

Buchhorn, M., Smets, B., Bertels, L., Lesiv, M., Tsendbazar, N.-E., Herold, M., and Fritz, S. (2020). Copernicus Global Land Service: Land Cover 100m: Epoch 2015: Globe (Version V2.0.2) [Data set] 2019. Remote Sens., 12.

Breiman, 2001, Random forests, Mach. Learn., 45, 5, 10.1023/A:1010933404324

Diaz, 1997, Plant functional types and ecosystem function in relation to global change, J. Veg. Sci., 8, 463, 10.2307/3237198

Zhu, Z., Zhang, J., Yang, Z., Aljaddani, A.H., Cohen, W.B., Qiu, S., and Zhou, C. (2020). Continuous monitoring of land disturbance based on Landsat time series. Remote Sens. Environ., 238.

Zhu, 2014, Continuous change detection and classification of land cover using all available Landsat data, Remote Sens. Environ., 144, 152, 10.1016/j.rse.2014.01.011

Cohen, W.B., Healey, S.P., Yang, Z., Stehman, S.V., Brewer, C.K., Brooks, E.B., Gorelick, N., Huang, C., Hughes, M.J., and Kennedy, R.E. (2017). How Similar Are Forest Disturbance Maps Derived from Different Landsat Time Series Algorithms?. Forests, 8.

Patterson, 2019, Statistical properties of hybrid estimators proposed for GEDI—NASA’s global ecosystem dynamics investigation, Environ. Res. Lett., 14, 065007, 10.1088/1748-9326/ab18df

Tyukavina, 2015, Aboveground carbon loss in natural and managed tropical forests from 2000 to 2012, Environ. Res. Lett., 10, 74002, 10.1088/1748-9326/10/7/074002

Jantz, 2014, Carbon stock corridors to mitigate climate change and promote biodiversity in the tropics, Nat. Clim. Chang., 4, 138, 10.1038/nclimate2105

Hansen, 2019, Global humid tropics forest structural condition and forest structural integrity maps, Sci. Data, 6, 1, 10.1038/s41597-019-0214-3

Luther, 2006, Biomass mapping using forest type and structure derived from Landsat TM imagery, Int. J. Appl. Earth Obs. Geoinf., 8, 173

Simard, M., Pinto, N., Fisher, J.B., and Baccini, A. (2011). Mapping forest canopy height globally with spaceborne lidar. J. Geophys. Res. Biogeosci., 116.

Lang, 2019, Country-Wide high-resolution vegetation height mapping with Sentinel-2, Remote Sens. Environ., 233, 111347, 10.1016/j.rse.2019.111347