New Paper: Stratified aboveground forest biomass estimation by remote sensing data

New Paper: Stratified aboveground forest biomass estimation by remote sensing data

February 20, 2015

A new paper published recently by Int. J. Appl. Earth Obs. Geoinf. presents the results of a systhematic survey on the effects of post-stratification of sampling units on the quality of remote sensing-assisted biomass models. This is somwhat controversial to the status quo in the literature, which mostly suggests that estimates can be improved by building species- or strata-specific biomass models.

 

We analyzed the impact of stratifying forest data into three classes (broadleaved, coniferous and mixed forest). We compared predictive accuracy a) between the strata b) to a case without stratification for a set of pre-selected predictors from airborne LiDAR and hyperspectral data. The achieved RMSE and r2 diagnostic values were analyzed in a factorial design to rank the relative importance of each factor. Selected models were used for wall-to-wall mapping of biomass estimates and their associated uncertainty. The results revealed marginal advantages for the strata-specific prediction models over the unstratified ones, which were more obvious on the wall-to-wall mapped area-based predictions. Yet, further tests are necessary to establish the generality of these results. Input data type and statistical prediction method are concluded to remain the two most crucial factors for the quality of remote sensing-assisted biomass models.

A full text of this paper can be found at:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0303243415000264

 

you may also like:

PhD defense by Thilo Erbertseder

PhD defense by Thilo Erbertseder

Thilo Erbertseder will defend his PhD thesis "Satellite-based analysis of NO2 air pollution: from global to urban aspect" on Wednesday 23rd of July at 3pm in John-Skilton Str. 4a, seminar room 1. All interested staff, students, family and friends are cordially invited...

upcoming PhD defense by Adomas Liepa

upcoming PhD defense by Adomas Liepa

Our PhD student Adomas Liepa will defend his Phd "Potential of Satellite Earth Observation in seasonal monitoring of complex agricultural environments of East Africa" on Thursday 24th of July at 11am. The defense will take place at John Skilton Str. 4a, seminarroom 1....

DLR supports Zeit Magazine with Land Surface Temperature data

DLR supports Zeit Magazine with Land Surface Temperature data

Our colleagues from DLR provided long-term Land Surface Temperature (LST) data for an interactive tool in the Zeit Magazine which was recently published online https://www.zeit.de/zeit-magazin/2025-06/stadtteile-grossstaedte-wohnen-deutschland-lebensqualitaet The tool...

Special Issue related to JURSE – Call for Papers

Special Issue related to JURSE – Call for Papers

In the course of the Joint Urban Remote Sensing Event (JURSE), which took place in Tunis, Tunisia, at the beginning of May this year, there is again a special issue related to JURSE and beyond. The Call for Papers has just been published in the IEEE Journal of...

EORC Staff and EAGLE Students at ESA Living Planet Symposium 2025

EORC Staff and EAGLE Students at ESA Living Planet Symposium 2025

This week, our EORC team and EAGLE MSc students are joining the global Earth observation community at the ESA Living Planet Symposium (LPS) 2025 — one of the most important gatherings for Earth system scientists, remote sensing experts, and space agencies worldwide....