ESTIMATING CARBON STOCKS OF CONIFEROUS WOODY CANOPY TREES USING AIRBORNE LIDAR AND PASSIVE OPTICAL SENSER

摘要

We confirmed the effectiveness of airborne LiDAR and passive optical remote sensing techniques for estimating carbon stocks of all tree organs for woody canopy two coniferous trees, Japanese red pine and Japanese cedar trees. Airborne 3-D LiDAR data and aerial photograph provided tree height and canopy area for each of the trees. Then, we examined the relationships between 1) LiDAR-derived tree height and carbon stock 2) canopy area obtained from aerial photograph and carbon stock. In addition, we made a multiplicative equation composed of both tree height and canopy area to predict the carbon stock, and examined the accuracy by comparing between the predicted and field-based values. As a result, good correlations were observed between the LiDAR-derived tree height and carbon stock in both species, while correlations were worse between canopy area obtained from aerial photograph and carbon stock in both species. The multiplicative equation offered better results than the ones of using tree height or canopy area alone, where R~(2) and SE were 0.87 and 15.6 kg for Japanese red pine, and 0.85 and 7.1 kg for Japanese cedar. This shows the effectiveness of the combination of LiDAR and passive optical sensors for the carbon stock estimation.