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Remote Sensing to Assess Canopy Structure and Function

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A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292). This special issue belongs to the section "Forest Remote Sensing".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 September 2019) | Viewed by 45094

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Special Issue Editor

Dr. Geoffrey Parker

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Guest Editor

Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, MD 21037, USA
Interests: canopy structure; comparative research; ecosystem processes; forest ecology; landscape scales; remote sensing

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The canopy is a fundamental component of vegetation. The structure of the canopy has a critical role in the many functional properties of vegetation, for example, interior complexity, habitat quality and microclimate; vegetation type, stage, spatial organization and disturbance regime; ecosystem processes involving energy, water and carbon. Structure not only constrains and indicates functions but also is often easier to measure than function. Understanding the links between structure and function can be critical for scaling and modelling. From a remote sensing perspective, the outer canopy is the part of vegetation primarily observed. Here, we define canopy structure as the arrangement of the aboveground components of vegetation in time and space.

We invite researchers to submit articles describing new methods, findings and insights for a Special Issue on Remote Sensing of Canopy Structure and Function. The submissions can be based on various platforms (drone, airborne or satellite), sensors (LIDAR, RADAR, spectral, digital image aggregations), and structural attributes of interest (height, total surface area, cover, texture, spatial arrangement). We suspect most reports will focus on forests; studies on other sorts of vegetation are appreciated.

Especially welcome are the following: 1.) analyses based on the fusion of qualitatively different sensors, especially when co-located (for example, LIDAR-hyperspectral systems such as the NASA G-LiHT or the NEON AOP)—how do structural and reflective properties interact? 2.) studies of structure combining both remotely sensed information and ground observations—are these viewpoints complementary? 3.) investigations combining data of different inherent spatial scales—how can these be integrated? 4.) considerations of canopy regions not readily perceived remotely—what can be learned about canopy interior structure? 5.) examination of structural variation in time—how can we distinguish and quantify changes? We particularly encourage submissions that identify and explore a mechanistic basis of the connection between important canopy structural features and the performance of the remote sensor.

Dr. Geoffrey Parker
Guest Editor

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Keywords

canopy
dynamics
function
fusion
mechanism
structure

Published Papers (8 papers)

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Research

21 pages, 3229 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Tree Species Traits Determine the Success of LiDAR-Based Crown Mapping in a Mixed Temperate Forest

by Jack H. Hastings, Scott V. Ollinger, Andrew P. Ouimette, Rebecca Sanders-DeMott, Michael W. Palace, Mark J. Ducey, Franklin B. Sullivan, David Basler and David A. Orwig

Remote Sens. 2020, 12(2), 309; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12020309 - 17 Jan 2020

Cited by 45 | Viewed by 6534

Abstract

The ability to automatically delineate individual tree crowns using remote sensing data opens the possibility to collect detailed tree information over large geographic regions. While individual tree crown delineation (ITCD) methods have proven successful in conifer-dominated forests using Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data, it remains unclear how well these methods can be applied in deciduous broadleaf-dominated forests. We applied five automated LiDAR-based ITCD methods across fifteen plots ranging from conifer- to broadleaf-dominated forest stands at Harvard Forest in Petersham, MA, USA, and assessed accuracy against manual delineation of crowns from unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery. We then identified tree- and plot-level factors influencing the success of automated delineation techniques. There was relatively little difference in accuracy between automated crown delineation methods (51–59% aggregated plot accuracy) and, despite parameter tuning, none of the methods produced high accuracy across all plots (27—90% range in plot-level accuracy). The accuracy of all methods was significantly higher with increased plot conifer fraction, and individual conifer trees were identified with higher accuracy (mean 64%) than broadleaf trees (42%) across methods. Further, while tree-level factors (e.g., diameter at breast height, height and crown area) strongly influenced the success of crown delineations, the influence of plot-level factors varied. The most important plot-level factor was species evenness, a metric of relative species abundance that is related to both conifer fraction and the degree to which trees can fill canopy space. As species evenness decreased (e.g., high conifer fraction and less efficient filling of canopy space), the probability of successful delineation increased. Overall, our work suggests that the tested LiDAR-based ITCD methods perform equally well in a mixed temperate forest, but that delineation success is driven by forest characteristics like functional group, tree size, diversity, and crown architecture. While LiDAR-based ITCD methods are well suited for stands with distinct canopy structure, we suggest that future work explore the integration of phenology and spectral characteristics with existing LiDAR as an approach to improve crown delineation in broadleaf-dominated stands. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing to Assess Canopy Structure and Function)

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24 pages, 5035 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Regional-Scale Forest Mapping over Fragmented Landscapes Using Global Forest Products and Landsat Time Series Classification

by Viktor Myroniuk, Mykola Kutia, Arbi J. Sarkissian, Andrii Bilous and Shuguang Liu

Remote Sens. 2020, 12(1), 187; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12010187 - 05 Jan 2020

Cited by 28 | Viewed by 6767

Abstract

Satellite imagery of 25–30 m spatial resolution has been recognized as an effective tool for monitoring the spatial and temporal dynamics of forest cover at different scales. However, the precise mapping of forest cover over fragmented landscapes is complicated and requires special consideration. We have evaluated the performance of four global forest products of 25–30 m spatial resolution within three flatland subregions of Ukraine that have different forest cover patterns. We have explored the relationship between tree cover extracted from the global forest change (GFC) and relative stocking density of forest stands and justified the use of a 40% tree cover threshold for mapping forest in flatland Ukraine. In contrast, the canopy cover threshold for the analogous product Landsat tree cover continuous fields (LTCCF) is found to be 25%. Analysis of the global forest products, including discrete forest masks Global PALSAR-2/PALSAR Forest/Non-Forest Map (JAXA FNF) and GlobeLand30, has revealed a major misclassification of forested areas under severe fragmentation patterns of landscapes. The study also examined the effectiveness of forest mapping over fragmented landscapes using dense time series of Landsat images. We collected 1548 scenes of Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) for the period 2014–2016 and composited them into cloudless mosaics for the following four seasons: yearly, summer, autumn, and April–October. The classification of images was performed in Google Earth Engine (GEE) Application Programming Interface (API) using random forest (RF) classifier. As a result, 30 m spatial resolution forest mask for flatland of Ukraine was created. The user’s and producer’s accuracy were estimated to be 0.910 ± 0.015 and 0.880 ± 0.018, respectively. The total forest area for the flatland Ukraine is 9440.5 ± 239.4 thousand hectares, which is 3% higher than official data. In general, we conclude that the Landsat-derived forest mask performs well over fragmented landscapes if forest cover of the territory is higher than 10–15%. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing to Assess Canopy Structure and Function)

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21 pages, 3644 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Assessing Legacy Effects of Wildfires on the Crown Structure of Fire-Tolerant Eucalypt Trees Using Airborne LiDAR Data

by Yogendra K. Karna, Trent D. Penman, Cristina Aponte and Lauren T. Bennett

Remote Sens. 2019, 11(20), 2433; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11202433 - 20 Oct 2019

Cited by 28 | Viewed by 4539

Abstract

The fire-tolerant eucalypt forests of south eastern Australia are assumed to fully recover from even the most intense fires; however, surprisingly, very few studies have quantitatively assessed that recovery. The accurate assessment of horizontal and vertical attributes of tree crowns after fire is essential to understand the fire’s legacy effects on tree growth and on forest structure. In this study, we quantitatively assessed individual tree crowns 8.5 years after a 2009 wildfire that burnt extensive areas of eucalypt forest in temperate Australia. We used airborne LiDAR data validated with field measurements to estimate multiple metrics that quantified the cover, density, and vertical distribution of individual-tree crowns in 51 plots of 0.05 ha in fire-tolerant eucalypt forest across four wildfire severity types (unburnt, low, moderate, high). Significant differences in the field-assessed mean height of fire scarring as a proportion of tree height and in the proportions of trees with epicormic (stem) resprouts were consistent with the gradation in fire severity. Linear mixed-effects models indicated persistent effects of both moderate and high-severity wildfire on tree crown architecture. Trees at high-severity sites had significantly less crown projection area and live crown width as a proportion of total crown width than those at unburnt and low-severity sites. Significant differences in LiDAR -based metrics (crown cover, evenness, leaf area density profiles) indicated that tree crowns at moderate and high-severity sites were comparatively narrow and more evenly distributed down the tree stem. These conical-shaped crowns contrasted sharply with the rounded crowns of trees at unburnt and low-severity sites and likely influenced both tree productivity and the accuracy of biomass allometric equations for nearly a decade after the fire. Our data provide a clear example of the utility of airborne LiDAR data for quantifying the impacts of disturbances at the scale of individual trees. Quantified effects of contrasting fire severities on the structure of resprouter tree crowns provide a strong basis for interpreting post-fire patterns in forest canopies and vegetation profiles in Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) and other remotely-sensed data at larger scales. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing to Assess Canopy Structure and Function)

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23 pages, 6681 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Global White-Sky and Black-Sky FAPAR Retrieval Using the Energy Balance Residual Method: Algorithm and Validation

by Liangyun Liu, Xiao Zhang, Shuai Xie, Xinjie Liu, Bowen Song, Siyuan Chen and Dailiang Peng

Remote Sens. 2019, 11(9), 1004; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11091004 - 27 Apr 2019

Cited by 16 | Viewed by 3883

Abstract

The fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation by vegetation (FAPAR) is a key variable in describing the light absorption ability of the vegetation canopy. Most global FAPAR products, such as MCD15A2H and GEOV1, correspond to FAPAR under black-sky conditions at the satellite overpass time only. In this paper, we aim to produce both the global white-sky and black-sky FAPAR products based on the moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) visible (VIS) albedo, leaf area index (LAI), and clumping index (CI) products. Firstly, a non-linear spectral mixture model (NSM) was designed to retrieve the soil visible (VIS) albedo. The global soil VIS albedo and its dynamics were successfully mapped at a resolution of 500 m using the MCD43A3 VIS albedo product and the MCD15A2H LAI product. Secondly, a method based on the energy balance residual (EBR) principle was presented to retrieve the white-sky and black-sky FAPAR using the MODIS broadband VIS albedo (white-sky and black-sky) product (MCD43A3), the LAI product (MCD15A2H) and CI products. Finally, the two EBR FAPAR products were compared with the MCD15A2H and Geoland2/BioPar version 1 (GEOV1) black-sky FAPAR products. A comparison of the results indicates that these FAPAR products show similar spatial and seasonal patterns. Direct validation using FAPAR observations from the Validation of Land European Remote sensing Instrument (VALERI) project demonstrates that the EBR black-sky FAPAR product was more accurate and had a lower bias (R² = 0.917, RMSE = 0.088, and bias = −2.8 %) than MCD15A2H (R² = 0.901, RMSE = 0.096, and bias = 7.6 % ) and GEOV1 (R²= 0.868, RMSE = 0.105, and bias = 6.1%). Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing to Assess Canopy Structure and Function)

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22 pages, 5307 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Terrestrial Laser Scanning to Predict Canopy Area Metrics, Water Storage Capacity, and Throughfall Redistribution in Small Trees

by Mariana D. Baptista, Stephen J. Livesley, Ebadat G. Parmehr, Melissa Neave and Marco Amati

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(12), 1958; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10121958 - 05 Dec 2018

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 3209

Abstract

Urban trees deliver many ecological services to the urban environment, including reduced runoff generation in storms. Trees intercept rainfall and store part of the water on leaves and branches, reducing the volume and velocity of water that reaches the soil. Moreover, trees modify the spatial distribution of rainwater under the canopy. However, measuring interception parameters is a complex task because it depends on many factors, including environmental conditions (rainfall intensity, wind speed, etc.) and tree characteristics (plant surface area, leaf and branch inclination angle, etc.). In the few last decades, remotely sensed data have been tested for retrieving tree metrics, but the use of this derived data for predicting interception parameters are still being developed. In this study, we measured the minimum water storage capacity (C_min) and throughfall under the canopies of 12 trees belonging to three different species. All trees had their plant surface metrics calculated: plant surface area (PSA), plant area index (PAI), and plant area density (PAD). Trees were scanned with a mobile terrestrial laser scan (TLS) to obtain their individual canopy point clouds. Point clouds were used to calculate canopy metrics (canopy projected area and volume) and TLS-derived surface metrics. Measured surface metrics were then correlated to derived TLS metrics, and the relationship between TLS data and interception parameters was tested. Additionally, TLS data was used in analyses of throughfall distribution on a sub-canopy scale. The significant correlation between the directly measured surface area and TLS-derived metrics validates the use of the remotely sensed data for predicting plant area metrics. Moreover, TLS-derived metrics showed a significant correlation with a water storage capacity parameter (C_min). The present study supports the use of TLS data as a tool for measuring tree metrics and ecosystem services such as C_min; however, more studies to understand how to apply remotely sensed data into ecological analyses in the urban environment must be encouraged. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing to Assess Canopy Structure and Function)

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24 pages, 5755 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Structural and Spectral Analysis of Cereal Canopy Reflectance and Reflectance Anisotropy

by Theres Kuester and Daniel Spengler

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(11), 1767; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10111767 - 08 Nov 2018

Cited by 15 | Viewed by 5286

Abstract

The monitoring of agricultural areas is one of the most important topics for remote sensing data analysis, especially to assist food security in the future. To improve the quality and quantify uncertainties, it is of high relevance to understand the spectral reflectivity regarding the structural and spectral properties of the canopy. The importance of understanding the influence of plant and canopy structure is well established, but, due to the difficulty of acquiring reflectance data from numerous differently structured canopies, there is still a need to study the structural and spectral dependencies affecting top-of-canopy reflectance and reflectance anisotropy. This paper presents a detailed study dealing with two fundamental issues: (1) the influence of plant and canopy architecture changes due to crop phenology on nadir acquired cereal top-of-canopy reflectance, and (2) the anisotropic reflectance of cereal top-of-canopy reflectance and its inter-annual variations as affected by varying contents of biochemical constituents and changes on canopy structure across green phenological stages between tillering and inflorescence emergence. All of the investigations are based on HySimCaR, a computer-based approach using 3D canopy models and Monte Carlo ray tracing (drat). The achieved results show that the canopy architecture significantly influences top-of-canopy reflectance and the bidirectional reflectance function (BRDF) in the VNIR (visible and near infrared), and SWIR (shortwave infrared) wavelength ranges. In summary, it can be said that the larger the fraction of the radiation reflected by the plants, the stronger is the influence of the canopy structure on the reflectance signal. A significant finding for the anisotropic reflectance is that the relative row orientation of the cereal canopies is mapped in the 3D-shape of the BRDF. Summarised, this study provides fundamental knowledge for improving the retrieval of biophysical vegetation parameters of agricultural areas for current and upcoming sensors with large FOV (field of view) with respect to the quantification of uncertainties. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing to Assess Canopy Structure and Function)

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18 pages, 4952 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Filtering Stems and Branches from Terrestrial Laser Scanning Point Clouds Using Deep 3-D Fully Convolutional Networks

by Zhouxin Xi, Chris Hopkinson and Laura Chasmer

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(8), 1215; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10081215 - 02 Aug 2018

Cited by 33 | Viewed by 6759

Abstract

Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) can produce precise and detailed point clouds of forest environment, thus enabling quantitative structure modeling (QSM) for accurate tree morphology and wood volume allocation. Applying QSM to plot-scale wood delineation is highly dependent on wood visibility from forest scans. A common problem is to filter wood point from noisy leafy points in the crowns and understory. This study proposed a deep 3-D fully convolution network (FCN) to filter both stem and branch points from complex plot scans. To train the 3-D FCN, reference stem and branch points were delineated semi-automatically for 14 sampled areas and three common species. Among seven testing areas, agreements between reference and model prediction, measured by intersection over union (IoU) and overall accuracy (OA), were 0.89 (stem IoU), 0.54 (branch IoU), 0.79 (mean IoU), and 0.94 (OA). Wood filtering results were further incorporated to a plot-scale QSM to extract individual tree forms, isolated wood, and understory wood from three plot scans with visual assessment. The wood filtering experiment provides evidence that deep learning is a powerful tool in 3-D point cloud processing and parsing. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing to Assess Canopy Structure and Function)

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19 pages, 3760 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Terrestrial Laser Scanning to Detect Liana Impact on Forest Structure

by Sruthi M. Krishna Moorthy, Kim Calders, Manfredo Di Porcia e Brugnera, Stefan A. Schnitzer and Hans Verbeeck

Remote Sens. 2018, 10(6), 810; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10060810 - 23 May 2018

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 6399

Abstract

Tropical forests are currently experiencing large-scale structural changes, including an increase in liana abundance and biomass. Higher liana abundance results in reduced tree growth and increased tree mortality, possibly playing an important role in the global carbon cycle. Despite the large amount of data currently available on lianas, there are not many quantitative studies on the influence of lianas on the vertical structure of the forest. We study the potential of terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) in detecting and quantifying changes in forest structure after liana cutting using a small scale removal experiment in two plots (removal plot and non-manipulated control plot) in a secondary forest in Panama. We assess the structural changes by comparing the vertical plant profiles and Canopy Height Models (CHMs) between pre-cut and post-cut scans in the removal plot. We show that TLS is able to detect the local structural changes in all the vertical strata of the plot caused by liana removal. Our study demonstrates the reproducibility of the TLS derived metrics for the same location confirming the applicability of TLS for continuous monitoring of liana removal plots to study the long-term impacts of lianas on forest structure. We therefore recommend to use TLS when implementing new large scale liana removal experiments, as the impact of lianas on forest structure will determine the aboveground competition for light between trees and lianas, which has important implications for the global carbon cycle. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing to Assess Canopy Structure and Function)

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