Spracklen, B and Spracklen, DV orcid.org/0000-0002-7551-4597 (2021) Determination of Structural Characteristics of Old-Growth Forest in Ukraine Using Spaceborne LiDAR. Remote Sensing, 13 (7). 1233.
Abstract
A forest’s structure changes as it progresses through developmental stages from establishment to old-growth forest. Therefore, the vertical structure of old-growth forests will differ from that of younger, managed forests. Free, publicly available spaceborne Laser Range and Detection (LiDAR) data designed for the determination of forest structure has recently become available through NASA’s General Ecosystem and Development Investigation (GEDI). We use this data to investigate the structure of some of the largest remaining old-growth forests in Europe in the Ukrainian Carpathian Mountains. We downloaded 18489 cloud-free shots in the old-growth forest (OGF) and 20398 shots in adjacent non-OGF areas during leaf-on, snow-free conditions. We found significant differences between OGF and non-OGF over a wide range of structural metrics. OGF was significantly more open, with a more complex vertical structure and thicker ground-layer vegetation. We used Random Forest classification on a range of GEDI-derived metrics to classify OGF shapefiles with an accuracy of 73%. Our work demonstrates the use of spaceborne LiDAR for the identification of old-growth forests.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Keywords: | old-growth forest; forest structure; spaceborne LiDAR; GEDI; Carpathians; Random Forest |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Inst for Climate & Atmos Science (ICAS) (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number EU - European Union 771492 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 30 Apr 2021 12:10 |
Last Modified: | 28 May 2021 14:16 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | MDPI AG |
Identification Number: | 10.3390/rs13071233 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:173468 |