Accurately quantifying the above-ground carbon stock of tropical rainforest trees is the core component of “Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation-plus” (REDD+) projects and is important for evaluating the effects of anthropogenic global change. We used high-resolution optical imagery (IKONOS-2) to identify individual tree crowns in intact and degraded rainforests in the mountains of Northern Borneo, comparing our results with 50 ground-based plots dispersed in intact and degraded forests, within which all stems > 10 cm in diameter were measured and identified to species or genus. We used the dimensions of tree crowns detected in the imagery to estimate above-ground biomasses (AGBs) of individual trees and plots. To this purpose, preprocessed IKONOS imagery was segmented using a watershed algorithm; stem diameter values were then estimated from the cross-sectional crown areas of these trees using regression relationships obtained from ground-based measurements. Finally, we calculated the biomass of each tree (AGBT, in kg), and the AGB of plots by summation (AGBP, in Mg ha-1). Remotely sensed estimates of mean AGBT were similar to ground-based estimates in intact and degraded forests, even though small trees could not be detected from space-borne sensors. The intact and degraded forests not only had different AGB but were also dissimilar in biodiversity. A tree-centric approach to carbon mapping based on high-resolution optical imagery, could be a cheap alternative to airborne laser-scanning.
Keywords
, , , ,
Citation
Phua M-H, Ling Z-Y, Coomes DA, Wong W, Korom A, Tsuyuki S, Ioki K, Hirata Y, Saito H, Takao G (2017). Seeing trees from space: above-ground biomass estimates of intact and degraded montane rainforests from high-resolution optical imagery. iForest 10: 625-634. - doi: 10.3832/ifor2204-010
Academic Editor
Davide Travaglini
Paper history
Received: Aug 22, 2016
Accepted: May 04, 2017
First online: Jun 01, 2017
Publication Date: Jun 30, 2017
Publication Time: 0.93 months
© SISEF - The Italian Society of Silviculture and Forest Ecology 2017
Open Access
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Breakdown by View Type
(Waiting for server response...)
Article Usage
Total Article Views: 43642
(from publication date up to now)
Breakdown by View Type
HTML Page Views: 37091
Abstract Page Views: 1987
PDF Downloads: 3492
Citation/Reference Downloads: 42
XML Downloads: 1030
Web Metrics
Days since publication: 2730
Overall contacts: 43642
Avg. contacts per week: 111.90
Article Citations
Article citations are based on data periodically collected from the Clarivate Web of Science web site
(last update: Feb 2023)
Total number of cites (since 2017): 4
Average cites per year: 0.57
Publication Metrics
by Dimensions ©
Articles citing this article
List of the papers citing this article based on CrossRef Cited-by.
(1)
Aiba S, Kitayama K (1999)Structure, composition and species diversity in an altitude-substrate matrix of rain forest tree communities on Mount Kinabalu, Borneo. Plant Ecology 140: 139-157.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(2)
Anderson MJ (2001)A new method for non-parametric multivariate analysis of variance. Austral Ecology 26: 32-46.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(3)
Asner GP (2002)Estimating canopy structure in an Amazon forest from laser finder and IKONOS satellite observations. Biotropica 34: 483-492.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(4)
Asner GP, Warner AS (2003)Canopy shadow in IKONOS satellite observations of tropical forests and savannas. Remote Sensing of Environment 87: 521-533.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(5)
Asner GP, Powell GV, Mascaro J, Knapp DE, Clark JK, Jacobson J, Kennedy-Bowdoin T, Balaji A, Paez-Acosta G, Victoria E, Secada L, Valqui M, Hughes RF (2010)High-resolution forest carbon stocks and emissions in the Amazon. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 107: 16738-16742.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(6)
Asner GP, Mascaro J (2014)Mapping tropical forest carbon: calibrating plot estimates to a simple LiDAR metric. Remote Sensing of Environment 140: 614-624.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(7)
Bartelink HH (1996)Allometric relationship on biomass and needle of Douglas-fir. Forest Ecology and Management 86: 193-203.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(8)
Basuki TM, Van Laake PE, Skidmore AK, Hussin YA (2009)Allometric equations for estimating the above-ground biomass in tropical lowland Dipterocarp forests. Forest Ecology and Management 257: 1684-1694.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(9)
Broadbent EN, Asner GP, Pena-Claros M, Palace M, Soriano M (2008)Spatial portioning of biomass and diversity in a lowland Bolivian forest: linking field and remote sensing measurements. Forest Ecology and Management 255: 2602-2616.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(10)
Broich M, Hansen MC, Potapov PV, Wimberley M (2013)Patterns of tree cover loss along the Indonesia-Malaysia border on Borneo. International Journal of Remote Sensing 34 (16): 5748-5760.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(11)
Brown S (2002)Measuring carbon in forests: current status and future challenges. Environmental Pollution 116: 363-372.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(12)
Chao A, Chazdon RL, Colwell RK, Shen TJ (2005)A new statistical approach for assessing similarity of species composition with incidence and abundance data. Ecology Letters 8: 148-159.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(13)
Chave J, Réjou-Méchain M, Búrquez A, Chidumayo E, Colgan MS, Delitti WBC, Duque A, Eid T, Fearnside PM, Goodman RC, Henry M, Martínez-Yrízar A, Mugasha WA, Muller-Landau HC, Mencuccini M, Nelson BW, Ngomanda A, Nogueira EM, Ortiz-Malavassi E, Pélissier R, Ploton P, Ryan CM, Saldarriaga JG, Vieilledent G (2014)Improved allometric models to estimate the aboveground biomass of tropical trees. Global Change Biology 20: 3177-3190.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(14)
Chavez PS (1988)An improved dark object subtraction technique for atmospheric scattering correction of multispectral data. Remote Sensing of Environment 24: 459-479.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(15)
Clinton N, Holt A, Scarborough J, Li Y, Peng G (2010)Accuracy assessment measures for object-based image segmentation goodness. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing 76: 289-299.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(16)
Culvenor DS (2003)Extracting individual tree information: a survey of techniques for high spatial resolution imagery. In: “Forest Environments: Concepts and Case Studies” (Wulder MA, Franklin SE eds). Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, MA, USA, pp. 255-277.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(17)
Dalponte M, Coomes DA (2016)Tree-centric mapping of forest carbon density from airborne laser scanning and hyperspectral data. Methods in Ecology and Evolution.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(18)
Dickson B, Kapos V (2012)Biodiversity monitoring for REDD+. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 4: 590-596.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(19)
Gardner TA, Burgess ND, Aguilar-Amuchastegui N, Barlow J, Berenguer E, Clements T, Danielsen F, Ferreira J, Foden W, Lees AC, Roman-Cuesta RM, Parry L, Schmitt CB, Strange N, Khan SM, Theilade I, Vieira ICG (2012)A framework for integrating biodiversity concerns into national REDD+ programmes. Biological Conservation 154: 61-71.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(20)
Gaveau DLA, Sloan S, Molidena E, Yaen H, Sheil D, Abram NK, Ancrenaz M, Nasi R, Quinones M, Wielaard N, Meijaard E (2014)Four decades of forest persistence, clearance and logging on Borneo. PLoS ONE 9 (7): e101654.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(21)
Gougeon FA, Leckie DG (2006)The individual tree crown approach applied to Ikonos images of a coniferous plantation area. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing 72: 1287-1297.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(22)
Hirata Y, Tsubota Y, Sakai A (2009)Allometric models of DBH and crown area derived from QuickBird panchromatic data in
Cryptomeria japonica and
Chamaecyparis obtuse stands. International Journal of Remote Sensing 30: 5071-5088.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(23)
Imai N, Seino T, Aiba S, Takyu M, Titin J, Kitayama K (2012)Effects of selective logging on tree species diversity and composition of Bornean tropical rain forests at different spatial scales. Plant Ecology 213: 1413-1424.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(24)
Imai N, Tanaka A, Samejima H, Sugau JB, Pereira JT, Titin J, Kurniawan Y, Kitayama K (2014)Tree community composition as an indicator in biodiversity monitoring of REDD+. Forest Ecology and Management 313: 169-179.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(25)
Ioki K, Tsuyuki S, Hirata Y, Phua MH, Wong W, Ling ZY, Saito H, Takao G (2014)Estimating aboveground biomass of tropical rainforest of different degradation levels in Northern Borneo using airborne lidar. Forest Ecology and Management 328: 335-341.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(26)
IPCC (2006)IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories. Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, Japan, pp. 20.
Gscholar
(27)
Kenzo T, Ichie T, Hattori D, Itioka T, Handa C, Ohkubo T, Kendawang JJ, Nakamura M, Sakaguchi M, Takahashi N, Okamoto M, Tanaka-Oda A, Sakurai K, Ninomiya I (2009)Development of allometric relationships for accurate estimation of above-ground biomass in tropical secondary forests in Sarawak, Malaysia. Journal of Tropical Ecology 25: 371-386.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(28)
Langner A, Samejima H, Ong RC, Titin J, Kitayama K (2012)Integration of carbon conservation into sustainable forest management using high resolution satellite imagery: a case study in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 18: 305-312.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(29)
Le Quere C, Raupach MR, Canadell JG, Marland G, Bopp L, Ciais P, Conway TJ, Doney SC, Feely RA, Foster PN, Friedlingstein P, Gurney K, Houghton RA, House JI, Huntingford C, Levy PE, Lomas MR, Majkut J, Metzl N, Ometto JP, Peters GP, Prentice IC, Randerson JT, Running SW, Sarmiento JL, Schuster U, Sitch S, Takahashi T, Viovy N, Van Der Werf GR, Woodward FI (2009)Trends in the sources and sinks of carbon dioxide. Nature Geoscience 2: 831-836.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(30)
Leckie DG, Gougeon FA, Walsworth N, Paradine D (2003)Stand delineation and composition estimation using semi-automated individual tree crown analysis. Remote Sensing of Environment 85: 355-369.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(31)
Leckie DG, Gougeon FA, Tinis S, Nelson T, Burnett CN, Dennis P (2005)Automated tree recognition in old growth conifer stands with high resolution digital imagery. Remote Sensing of Environment 94: 311-326.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(32)
Lu D (2005)Aboveground biomass estimation using Landsat TM data in the Brazilian Amazon. International Journal of Remote Sensing 26: 2509-2525.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(33)
Malhi Y, Grace J (2000)Tropical forests and atmospheric carbon dioxide. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 15: 332-337.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(34)
Morel AC, Fisher JB, Malhi Y (2012)Evaluating the potential to monitor aboveground biomass in forest and oil palm in Sabah, Malaysia, for 2000-2008 with Landsat ETM+ and ALOS-Palsar. International Journal of Remote Sensing 33: 3614-3639.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(35)
Murray JP, Grenyer R, Wunder S, Raes N, Jones JPG (2015)Spatial patterns of carbon, biodiversity, and REDD+ projects in Indonesia. Conservation Biology 29: 1434-1445.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(36)
Oksanen J, Blanchet FG, Kindt R, Legendre P, Minchin PR, O’Hara RB, Simpson GL, Solymos P, Stevens MHH, Wagner H (2013)Vegan: community ecology package. Web site.
Online |
Gscholar
(37)
Palace M, Keller M, Asner GP, Hagen S, Braswell B (2008)Amazon forest structure from IKONOS satellite data and the automated characterization of forest canopy properties. Biotropica 40: 141-150.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(38)
Pitkanen J (2001)Individual tree crown detection in digital aerial images by combining locally adaptive binarization and local maxima methods. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 31 (5): 832-844.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(39)
Phua MH, Saito H (2003)Estimation of biomass of a mountainous tropical forest using Landsat TM data. Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing 29: 429-440.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(40)
Phua MH, Ling ZY, Wong W, Korom A, Ahmad B, Besar NA, Tsuyuki S, Ioki K, Hoshimoto K, Hirata Y, Saito H, Takao G (2014)Estimation of above-ground biomass of a tropical forest in northern Borneo using high-resolution satellite image. Journal of Forest and Environmental Science 30: 233-242.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(41)
Pouliot D, King D (2005)Approaches for optimal automated individual tree crown detection in regenerating coniferous forests. Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing 31: 255-267.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(42)
Skidmore AK, Pettorelli N, Coops NC, Geller GN, Hansen M, Lucas R, Mücher CA, O’Connor B, Paganini M, Pereira HM, Schaepman ME, Turner W, Wang T, Wegmann M (2015)Environmental science: agree on biodiversity metrics to track from space. Nature 523 (7561): 403-405.
Online |
Gscholar
(43)
Sheil D, Burslem DFRP (2003)Disturbing hypotheses in tropical forests. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 18: 18-26.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(44)
Smith JA, Lin TL, Ranson KJ (1980)The Lambertian assumption and Landsat data. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing 46: 1183-1189.
Online |
Gscholar
(45)
Song C, Dickinson MB, Su L, Yaussey D (2010)Estimating average tree crown size using spatial information from IKONOS and Quickbird images: across sensor and across-site comparisons. Remote Sensing of Environment 114: 1099-1107.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(46)
Stern N (2007)The economics of climate change: the Stern review. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 712.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(47)
Su JC, Debinski DM, Jakubauskas ME, Kindscher K (2004)Beyond species richness: community similarity as a measure of cross-taxon congruence for coarse-filter conservation. Conservation Biology 18: 167-173.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(48)
Vermote EF, El-Saleous N, Justice CO, Kaufman YJ, Privette JL (1997)Atmospheric correction of visible to middle-infrared EOS-MODIS data over land surfaces: background, operational algorithm, and validation. Journal of Geophysical Research 102: 17131-17141.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(49)
Visseren-Hamakers I, McDermott C, Vijge M, Cashore B (2012)Trade-offs, co-benefits and safeguards: current debates on the breadth of REDD+. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 4: 590-596.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(50)
Wulder MA, White JC, Niemann KO, Goodenough DG (2002)Error reduction methods for local maximum filtering of high spatial resolution imagery for locating trees. Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing 28: 621-628.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(51)
Wang L, Gong P, Biging G (2004)Individual tree crown delineation and tree top detection in high spatial resolution aerial imagery. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing 70: 351-357.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
(52)
Yamakura T, Hagihara A, Sukardjo S, Ogawa H (1986)Aboveground biomass of tropical rain forest stands in Indonesian Borneo. Vegetatio 68: 71-82.
Online |
Gscholar
(53)
Zanne AE, Lopez-Gonzalez G, Coomes DA, Ilic J, Jansen S, Lewis SL, Miller RB, Swenson NG, Wiemann MC, Chave J (2009)Data from: Towards a worldwide wood economics spectrum. Dryad Digital Repository.
CrossRef |
Gscholar
