Forestry and Ecology

Three Dimensional Biomass Estimation


Forests, store vast amounts of carbon, in the vegetation (or biomass), above and below the ground as well as in soils. In tropical forests, such as in India the above ground biomass (AGB) component is very significant. AGB is quantified through the careful measurements of the vegetation in field plots, with the most reliable measurements, the gold standard being the destructive measurements of the different components – trunk, branches and twigs, leaves etc

LiDAR – Canopy Height Model in forest sites Terrestrial Laser Scanner (TLS) enables very high accuracy tree height and allometry measurements. Median height from canopy height model (CHM) is being used for estimating forest biomass which has very high accuracy compared to traditional technique. Reference calibration sites established with Terrestrial Lidar aided methodology are used to establish global biomass models for future NISAR satellite.