High resolution forest inventory of pure and mixed stands at regional level combining National Forest Inventory field plots, Landsat, and low density lidar

摘要

Many countries have employed recently developed technologies, such as airborne lidar, to capture nationwide three-dimensional information over the past few years. In Spain, a huge volume of lidar information is available for the majority of the territory in the Spanish National Plan of Aerial Orthophotography. In this article, a multi-source approach is taken, integrating available databases, such as nationwide lidar flights, Landsat imagery and permanent field plots from the Spanish National Forest Inventory, with good results in the generation of wall-to-wall forest inventories. Volume and basal area errors are similar to those obtained by other authors (using specific lidar flights and field plots) for similar species. Errors in stem number estimates are larger than the values found in the literature as a consequence of the great influence of variable-radius plots, as used in the Spanish National Forest Inventory, on this variable.