Allometric equations for integrating remote sensing imagery into forest monitoring programmes

Tommaso Jucker (1) , John Caspersen (2, 3) , Jérôme Chave (4) , Cécile Antin (5, 6) , Nicolas Barbier (5) , Frans Bongers (7) , Michele Dalponte (8) , Karin van Ewijk (9) , David Forrester (10) , Matthias Haeni (3) , Steven Higgins (11) , Robert Holdaway (12) , Yoshiko Iida (13) , Craig Lorimer (14) , Peter Marshall (15) , Stéphane Momo (5, 16) , Glenn Moncrieff (17) , Pierre Ploton (6, 5) , Lourens Poorter (7) , Kassim Abd Rahman , Michael Schlund (18) , Bonaventure Sonké (16) , Frank Sterck (7) , Anna Trugman (19) , Vladimir Usoltsev , Mark Vanderwel (20) , Peter Waldner (3) , Beatrice Wedeux (1) , Christian Wirth (21, 22) , Hannsjörg Wöll , Murray Woods , Wenhua Xiang (23) , Niklaus Zimmermann (3) , David Coomes (1)

1 CAM - University of Cambridge [UK]
2 University of Toronto
3 Swiss Federal Research Institute
4 EDB - Evolution et Diversité Biologique
5 UMR AMAP - Botanique et Modélisation de l'Architecture des Plantes et des Végétations
6 IFP - Institut Français de Pondichéry
7 WUR - Wageningen University and Research [Wageningen]
8 FEM - Fondazione Edmund Mach - Edmund Mach Foundation [Italie]
9 Queen's University [Kingston, Canada]
10 University of Freiburg [Freiburg]
11 University of Otago [Dunedin, Nouvelle-Zélande]
12 Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research [Lincoln]
13 FFPRI - Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute
14 University of Wisconsin-Madison
15 UBC - University of British Columbia
16 UY1 - Université de Yaoundé I
17 SAEON - South African Environmental Observation Network [Pretoria]
18 Friedrich-Schiller-Universität = Friedrich Schiller University Jena [Jena, Germany]
19 Princeton University
20 UR - University of Regina
21 Leipzig University / Universität Leipzig
22 iDiv - German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research
23 CSUFT - Central South University of Forestry and Technology

Remote sensing is revolutionizing the way we study forests, and recent technological advances mean we are now able– for the first time – to identify and measure the crown dimensions of individual trees from airborne imagery. Yet tomake full use of these data for quantifying forest carbon stocks and dynamics, a new generation of allometric toolswhich have tree height and crown size at their centre are needed. Here, we compile a global database of 108753 treesfor which stem diameter, height and crown diameter have all been measured, including 2395 trees harvested to measureaboveground biomass. Using this database, we develop general allometric models for estimating both the diameterand aboveground biomass of trees from attributes which can be remotely sensed – specifically height and crowndiameter. We show that tree height and crown diameter jointly quantify the aboveground biomass of individual treesand find that a single equation predicts stem diameter from these two variables across the world’s forests. These new allometric models provide an intuitive way of integrating remote sensing imagery into large-scale forest monitoringprogrammes and will be of key importance for parameterizing the next generation of dynamic vegetation models.

Mots clés: Height–diameter allometry; Crown architecture; Carbon mapping; Airborne laser scanning; Aboveground biomass; Stem diameter distributions

Domaines: Sylviculture, foresterie; Modélisation et simulation

Tommaso Jucker, John Caspersen, Jérôme Chave, Cécile Antin, Nicolas Barbier, et al.. Allometric equations for integrating remote sensing imagery into forest monitoring programmes. Global Change Biology, 2017, 23 (1), pp.177 - 190. ⟨10.1111/gcb.13388⟩. ⟨hal-01824479⟩