Regional Mapping of Vegetation Structure for Biodiversity Monitoring Using Airborne Lidar Data
Published: February 1, 2017
Author:
Guo X
,
Coops NC
,
Tompalski P
,
Nielsen SE
,
Bater CW
,
Stadt JJ
Vegetation structure has been identified as an important indicator in assessing biodiversity in forested landscapes. To assess forest structure at a regional or landscape resolution various forms of remote sensing are commonly used. This paper provides a novel approach for using lidar data to provide a continuous (30m) spatial resolution vegetation structure base map of ten natural sub regions in boreal and foothills forests in Alberta, Canada. The processed lidar data united with habitat indexes and 3 km x 7 km photo plot data provided by the ABMI is used to generate 8 classes of forest habitat structure categories. The data is than analyzed using cluster analysis to predict biodiversity metrics to be used by resource planners, governments, and other stakeholders.
Document Type: Peer-reviewed Publications - ABMI-data
Subject Area: Monitoring, Remote Sensing
Tags: biodiversity, Lidar, vegetation
