Allometric Relationships Between Above-Ground Biomass and Lidar Full Waveform Measurements - Potential Applications for Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) Mission

To reduce the site-dependent calibration effort for large scale above-ground biomass density (AGBD) estimation using the Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) lidar measurements, this study investigates the allometric relationship between the lidar waveform measurements and ABGD in forests with different ecosystem structure characteristics. We developed a biomass index directly from full waveform measurements. This index shows a consistent linear relationship with AGBD in different forest biomes. The index explains 87% of biomass variation (R2 ~ 0.87). For regions with relative narrow range of above-ground biomass, the index has similar performance with lidar height metrics. However it significantly outperforms the commonly used lidar height metrics for forests with large variations of vegetation structure and above-ground biomass range. The results indicate intrinsic allometric relationships between forest ABGD and lidar full waveform data. This index has a great potential to map large scale above-ground biomass using the GEDI measurements.