Lidar Used to Study Biological Diversity

U.S. scientists are using laser remote sensing lidar to study biological diversity.

The researchers from the Woods Hole Research Center, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the University of Maryland are using lidar — light detection and ranging — to predict bird species richness by examining 3-D images of forest canopy height in the Patuxent National Wildlife Refuge.

Habitat heterogeneity and complexity have been shown in many places to be directly related to animal species richness. Using that principle, scientists examined relationships between bird species richness and habitat metrics derived from lidar data. They then explored the efficacy of predicting bird richness and abundance based on such metrics.

According to Scott Goetz, a Woods Hole senior scientist who is leading the project: Lidar is the most unique and exciting technology to come along in the past decade in the remote sensing research community. We now have the ability to characterize vegetation in three dimensions, and that has implications not only for biodiversity research, but also for improved estimates of biomass and carbon stocks.

The first phase of the research is profiled in the journal Remote Sensing of Environment.