Multi-scale approach to estimating aboveground biomass in the Brazilian Amazon using Landsat and LiDAR data

ABSTRACT Forest degradation from either natural or anthropogenic drivers involves processes that change the capacity of the ecosystem to provide services. In Brazil, estimates of carbon emissions do not currently take into account emissions from forest degradation caused by fire or by selective logging. Here, we present a methodology to estimate aboveground biomass in forest degradedareas, that can be accounted to estimate carbon emissions. We explored a multi-scale and temporal approach involving Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) and orbital images from Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) sensor to estimate the aboveground biomass. Cross-validation results showed that 49% of the variation in biomass could be explained using this approach, with an estimation error 58 Mg ha−1 (49.08%). Due to the difficulty in measuring biomass in tropical forests, the proposed methodology can be an alternative in future works to estimate aboveground biomass in order to improve the estimates of carbon emissions by the governmental organizations.