Authors
Nico Lang, Walter Jetz, Konrad Schindler, Jan Dirk Wegner
Publication date
2023/11
Journal
Nature Ecology & Evolution
Volume
7
Issue
11
Pages
1778-1789
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group UK
Description
The worldwide variation in vegetation height is fundamental to the global carbon cycle and central to the functioning of ecosystems and their biodiversity. Geospatially explicit and, ideally, highly resolved information is required to manage terrestrial ecosystems, mitigate climate change and prevent biodiversity loss. Here we present a comprehensive global canopy height map at 10 m ground sampling distance for the year 2020. We have developed a probabilistic deep learning model that fuses sparse height data from the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) space-borne LiDAR mission with dense optical satellite images from Sentinel-2. This model retrieves canopy-top height from Sentinel-2 images anywhere on Earth and quantifies the uncertainty in these estimates. Our approach improves the retrieval of tall canopies with typically high carbon stocks. According to our map, only 5% of the global …
Total citations
20222023202495478
Scholar articles
N Lang, W Jetz, K Schindler, JD Wegner - Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2023