An integrated pan‐tropical biomass map using multiple reference datasets

作者：Valerio Avitabile, Martin Herold, G.B.M. Heuvelink, Simon L. Lewis, Oliver L. Phillips, Gregory P. Asner, John Armston, Peter S. Ashton, Lindsay F. Banin, Nicolas Bayol, Nicholas Berry, Pascal Boeckx, Bernardus H. J. de Jong, Ben DeVries, Cécile Girardin, Elizabeth Kearsley, Jeremy Lindsell, Gabriela López‐González, Richard Lucas, Yadvinder Malhi, A. Morel, Edward T. A. Mitchard, László Nagy, Lan Qie, M.J. Quiñones, Casey M. Ryan, Slik J. W. Ferry, Trey Sunderland, Gaia Vaglio Laurin, Roberto Cazzolla Gatti, Riccardo Valentini, Hans Verbeeck, Arief Wijaya, Simon Willcock · 发表于：Global Change Biology · 年份：2015 · DOI：10.1111/gcb.13139 · 被引用次数：738 · 研究领域：Remote Sensing in Agriculture、Remote Sensing and LiDAR Applications、Forest ecology and management

We combined two existing datasets of vegetation aboveground biomass (AGB) (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108, 2011, 9899; Nature Climate Change, 2, 2012, 182) into a pan-tropical AGB map at 1-km resolution using an independent reference dataset of field observations and locally calibrated high-resolution biomass maps, harmonized and upscaled to 14 477 1-km AGB estimates. Our data fusion approach uses bias removal and weighted linear averaging that incorporates and spatializes the biomass patterns indicated by the reference data. The method was applied independently in areas (strata) with homogeneous error patterns of the input (Saatchi and Baccini) maps, which were estimated from the reference data and additional covariates. Based on the fused map, we estimated AGB stock for the tropics (23.4 N-23.4 S) of 375 Pg dry mass, 9-18% lower than the Saatchi and Baccini estimates. The fused map also showed differing spatial patterns of AGB over large areas, with higher AGB density in the dense forest areas in the Congo basin, Eastern Amazon and South-East Asia, and lower values in Central America and in most dry vegetation areas of Africa than either of the input maps. The validation exercise, based on 2118 estimates from the reference dataset not used in the fusion process, showed that the fused map had a RMSE 15-21% lower than that of the input maps and, most importantly, nearly unbiased estimates (mean bias 5 Mg dry mass ha(-1) vs...