Forest Above Ground Biomass Estimation in China

In order to study the carbon cycling in China deeply, a forest above ground biomass (AGB) estimation research is carried out under the support of 'Strategic Priority Research Program - Climate Change: Carbone Budget and Related Issues' of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Carbon Project). The research aims to estimate the forest AGB in 2000, 2005 and 2010 in China, and analyzes its dynamic changes. The overall thinking of the research is using field works and airborne LiDAR data as basis to estimate the AGB in GLAS footprints, and then extrapolating discrete AGB to continuous results with optical and auxiliary data. Due to the large area of China, totally 8 sub-areas are marked out based on the different forest ecosystems and some other factors (Table 1 and Fig. 1). Here, a latest China's land cover product (the background of Fig 1), named 'ChinaCover', and also supported by the 'Carbon Project', is imported to classify the forest types. There are around 5000 sample plots (Table 1) surveyed by the 'Carbon Project'. It can provide a large number of training and validation data. At the same time, the research sets 6 other typical sample areas, which have areas of 60 to 200 km2, and airborne LiDAR flights are carried out to obtain high accuracy AGB in these areas. With the sample plots and 6 typical sample areas, the AGB in GLAS footprint is estimated. Since the sample plots and LiDAR flights were carried out in 2012, the height and area parameters extracted from GLAS footprint are corrected by tree growth model of different forest types. In a further step, extrapolation models are built together with time-series MODIS and auxiliary data. These models fully consider the time-series features and propose several long time-series indices to minimize the influence of spectral saturation. Results are validated by samples and compared to the result of some other researches. At last, the models are applied to the data of 2000, 2005 and 2010 to get the corresponding AGB maps. The final results will be announced in Oct. 2013. Fig. 1 The sub-areas division (excluding the South China Sea islands) Table 1 The 8 sub-areas setting and sample statistics