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Integrating GEDI and Landsat: Spaceborne Lidar and Four Decades of Optical Imagery for the Analysis of Forest Disturbances and Biomass Changes in Italy

Forests play a prominent role in the battle against climate change, as they absorb a relevant part of human carbon emissions. However, precisely because of climate change, forest disturbances are expected to increase and alter forests’ capacity to absorb carbon. In this context, forest monitoring us...

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Autores principales: Francini, Saverio, D’Amico, Giovanni, Vangi, Elia, Borghi, Costanza, Chirici, Gherardo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8914649/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35271161
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s22052015
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author Francini, Saverio
D’Amico, Giovanni
Vangi, Elia
Borghi, Costanza
Chirici, Gherardo
author_facet Francini, Saverio
D’Amico, Giovanni
Vangi, Elia
Borghi, Costanza
Chirici, Gherardo
author_sort Francini, Saverio
collection PubMed
description Forests play a prominent role in the battle against climate change, as they absorb a relevant part of human carbon emissions. However, precisely because of climate change, forest disturbances are expected to increase and alter forests’ capacity to absorb carbon. In this context, forest monitoring using all available sources of information is crucial. We combined optical (Landsat) and photonic (GEDI) data to monitor four decades (1985–2019) of disturbances in Italian forests (11 Mha). Landsat data were confirmed as a relevant source of information for forest disturbance mapping, as forest harvestings in Tuscany were predicted with omission errors estimated between 29% (in 2012) and 65% (in 2001). GEDI was assessed using Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) data available for about 6 Mha of Italian forests. A good correlation (r(2) = 0.75) between Above Ground Biomass Density GEDI estimates (AGBD) and canopy height ALS estimates was reported. GEDI data provided complementary information to Landsat. The Landsat mission is capable of mapping disturbances, but not retrieving the three-dimensional structure of forests, while our results indicate that GEDI is capable of capturing forest biomass changes due to disturbances. GEDI acquires useful information not only for biomass trend quantification in disturbance regimes but also for forest disturbance discrimination and characterization, which is crucial to further understanding the effect of climate change on forest ecosystems.
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spelling pubmed-89146492022-03-12 Integrating GEDI and Landsat: Spaceborne Lidar and Four Decades of Optical Imagery for the Analysis of Forest Disturbances and Biomass Changes in Italy Francini, Saverio D’Amico, Giovanni Vangi, Elia Borghi, Costanza Chirici, Gherardo Sensors (Basel) Article Forests play a prominent role in the battle against climate change, as they absorb a relevant part of human carbon emissions. However, precisely because of climate change, forest disturbances are expected to increase and alter forests’ capacity to absorb carbon. In this context, forest monitoring using all available sources of information is crucial. We combined optical (Landsat) and photonic (GEDI) data to monitor four decades (1985–2019) of disturbances in Italian forests (11 Mha). Landsat data were confirmed as a relevant source of information for forest disturbance mapping, as forest harvestings in Tuscany were predicted with omission errors estimated between 29% (in 2012) and 65% (in 2001). GEDI was assessed using Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) data available for about 6 Mha of Italian forests. A good correlation (r(2) = 0.75) between Above Ground Biomass Density GEDI estimates (AGBD) and canopy height ALS estimates was reported. GEDI data provided complementary information to Landsat. The Landsat mission is capable of mapping disturbances, but not retrieving the three-dimensional structure of forests, while our results indicate that GEDI is capable of capturing forest biomass changes due to disturbances. GEDI acquires useful information not only for biomass trend quantification in disturbance regimes but also for forest disturbance discrimination and characterization, which is crucial to further understanding the effect of climate change on forest ecosystems. MDPI 2022-03-04 /pmc/articles/PMC8914649/ /pubmed/35271161 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s22052015 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Francini, Saverio
D’Amico, Giovanni
Vangi, Elia
Borghi, Costanza
Chirici, Gherardo
Integrating GEDI and Landsat: Spaceborne Lidar and Four Decades of Optical Imagery for the Analysis of Forest Disturbances and Biomass Changes in Italy
title Integrating GEDI and Landsat: Spaceborne Lidar and Four Decades of Optical Imagery for the Analysis of Forest Disturbances and Biomass Changes in Italy
title_full Integrating GEDI and Landsat: Spaceborne Lidar and Four Decades of Optical Imagery for the Analysis of Forest Disturbances and Biomass Changes in Italy
title_fullStr Integrating GEDI and Landsat: Spaceborne Lidar and Four Decades of Optical Imagery for the Analysis of Forest Disturbances and Biomass Changes in Italy
title_full_unstemmed Integrating GEDI and Landsat: Spaceborne Lidar and Four Decades of Optical Imagery for the Analysis of Forest Disturbances and Biomass Changes in Italy
title_short Integrating GEDI and Landsat: Spaceborne Lidar and Four Decades of Optical Imagery for the Analysis of Forest Disturbances and Biomass Changes in Italy
title_sort integrating gedi and landsat: spaceborne lidar and four decades of optical imagery for the analysis of forest disturbances and biomass changes in italy
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8914649/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35271161
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s22052015
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