Current climate predictions indicate that high northern latitude ecosystems will experience significant change over the next century and beyond. USGS scientists developed an approach for mapping canopy height using remotely sensed data that are readily available across the entire boreal forest region. The approach combines spaceborne lidar data from the Geosciences Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) with multispectral and multi-angular data from the Multi-Angle Imaging Spectroradiometer (MISR) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) to quantify canopy height at 250 m spatial resolution. Canopy height is an important vegetation metric that can be used to provide information for scientists and land managers regarding habitat type, successional stage, above-ground biomass, and other characteristics. A notable aspect of this approach is that it makes use of late winter imagery acquired with snow cover on the ground, an imagery resource that has been ignored by most vegetation remote sensing efforts. https://alaska.usgs.gov/portal/project.php?project_id=273
Canopy height map for a portion of Interior Alaska including Fairbanks, the White Mountains, and the Yukon River