Abstract
Temporal series of lidar, properly field-validated, can provide critical information allowing in-ferences about the dynamics of biomass and carbon in forest canopies. Forest canopies gain carbon through net primary production (NPP) and lose carbon through canopy component damage and death, such as fine and coarse woody debris and litterfall (collectively, debris-fall). We describe a statistical method to extract gamma distributions of NPP and debris-fall rates in forest canopies from lidar missions repeated through time and we show that the means of these distributions covary with ecologically meaningful variables: topography, canopy structure, and taxonomic composition. The method employed is the generalized method of moments that applies the R package gmm to uncover the distribution of latent variables. We present an example with eco-logical interpretations that support the method’s application to change in biomass estimated for a boreal forest in southcentral Alaska. The deconvolution of net change from remote sensing products as distributions of NPP and debris-fall rates can inform carbon cycling models of can-opy-level NPP and debris-fall rates.
Highlights
Net primary production (NPP) is the difference between carbon fixed through photosynthesis and released through respiration
We show that variability in topography, forest composition, and canopy structure explain variability in mean G and D rates, providing an ecologically relevant deconvolution of Temporal series of lidar data (TSL)
Motivated by the general additive model (GAM) fit of ∆H to 2002 Ht and Elev (Table S2), we investigated the deconvolution model where G and D depended on Ht of forest vegetation type-i (Vi, where i is Broadleaf, Mixed, and Needleleaf) as ∆H ( Ht, Vi ) ∼ U ( Ht, Vi ) = G ( Ht, Vi ) − D ( Ht, Vi )
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Temporal series of lidar data (TSL) are increasingly available and used to estimate forest carbon. Net primary production (NPP) is the difference between carbon fixed through photosynthesis and released through respiration. Estimates of forest NPP as growth—and debris-fall as mortality—rely on field-collected databases that show that environmental controls [1], as well as individual tree size [2] and age [3], and forest composition [4]
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