Measuring Vegetation Structure and Surface Topography using Waveform-Recording Lidar
Abstract
The Land Vegetation and Ice Sensor Facility (LVIS-F) is a high-altitude, wide-swath laser altimeter that has, for over 20 years, demonstrated state-of-the-art performance in surface altimetry. Data are used for a variety of applications such as sensor calibration and validation, producing large-area and transect surveys for NASA programs such as IceBridge, ABoVE and AfriSAR, as well as data for individual end users. LVIS-F also provides the opportunity to demonstrate technology and processing methodologies for future spaceborne sensors. LVIS-F is the airborne emulator of NASA's GEDI mission, and has served as a test bed for many of the geolocation and waveform interpretation algorithms that will be used on GEDI data as well in development of data products. LVIS-F and GEDI employ the full-waveform laser altimetry (lidar) technique to provide surface structure and topography measurements for every footprint. Although LVIS-F footprint sizes are modifiable according to the application, a wealth of data has been collected with 20m diameter footprints (i.e., similar to GEDI) over a variety of terrain types providing data to inform GEDI algorithm approaches pre-launch. We review waveform interpretation techniques employed on LVIS data to extract footprint-level topography and vegetation structure measurements, their precision and accuracy, and the application of these techniques to generate Level2 GEDI data products. Examples from recent LVIS missions will be used as well as pre-launch test data collected by the GEDI instrument. GEDI is due to launch to the ISS in late 2018. LVIS is a NASA Facility instrument.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.B44E..11H
- Keywords:
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- 0434 Data sets;
- BIOGEOSCIENCESDE: 0439 Ecosystems;
- structure and dynamics;
- BIOGEOSCIENCESDE: 0480 Remote sensing;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES