The extraction of forest CO2 storage capacity using high-resolution airborne lidar data

Abstract

With the increasing concern about global warming, the estimation of the CO2 sink capacity of the biosphere has become one of the main issues of remote sensing studies. This paper discusses the estimation of CO2 storage capacity in forests using airborne light detection and ranging (lidar) data. To achieve the correct biomass estimation, a processing chain consisting of the bare earth digital terrain model (DTM) extraction and individual tree crown segmentation has been constructed and applied to the dense airborne lidar data. As a result of the sample processing, the reliable bare earth DTM and tree boundaries were extracted in the study area with an overall accuracy of 71%. The total estimated CO2 storage capacity in the study area using the extracted tree crown structures is accurate, with only a 7% error level compared to field measurements.