Stratified aboveground forest biomass estimation by remote sensing data

Remote sensing-assisted estimates of aboveground forest biomass are essential for modeling carbon budgets. It has been suggested that estimates can be improved by building species- or strata-specific biomass models. However, few studies have attempted a systematic analysis of the benefits of such stratification, especially in combination with other factors such as sensor type, statistical prediction method and sampling design of the reference inventory data. We addressed this topic by analyzing the impact of stratifying forest data into three classes (broadleaved, coniferous and mixed forest). We compare predictive accuracy (a) between the strata (b) to a case without stratification for a set of pre-selected predictors from airborne LiDAR and hyperspectral data obtained in a managed mixed forest site in southwestern Germany. We used 5 commonly applied algorithms for biomass predictions on bootstrapped subsamples of the data to obtain cross validated RMSE and r2 diagnostics. Those values were analyzed in a factorial design by an analysis of variance (ANOVA) to rank the relative importance of each factor. Selected models were used for wall-to-wall mapping of biomass estimates and their associated uncertainty. The results revealed marginal advantages for the strata-specific prediction models over the unstratified ones, which were more obvious on the wall-to-wall mapped area-based predictions. Yet further tests are necessary to establish the generality of these results. Input data type and statistical prediction method are concluded to remain the two most crucial factors for the quality of remote sensing-assisted biomass models.