LiDAR mapping for carbon

How can LiDAR be used to assist forest owners in their carbon accounting

Thomas Paul, Peter Beets, Mark Kimberley

Emerging Forest inventory tool

• LiDAR- Light Detection and Range

• Tasmania: ½ M hectares (2.1 M

hectares over 3 years)

• Used in Norway, Finland and other

countries for multifunctional forest

inventories

• New Zealand‟s national carbon

inventory

• Why: scalable, objective

assessment method, multiple uses

of data

What does it has to do with Carbon

and Climate Change ?

A tool for carbon assessments

• Supports national and international

reporting requirements

• Can provide a standardised

approach to measure carbon stocks

Improving and developing models

• Describing trees better

• Variability of trees under

environmental conditions

Assessment for carbon stocks

• Based on

nationwide data

• Function of p30ht

& % cover

• Explains 72.4% of

the variation

(74% full plots)

• Double sampling

increase of

precision: 6%

0

50

100

150

200

250

0 50 100 150 200 250

predicted total C (t/ha)

tota

l C

(t/

ha)

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160

predicted AGB C (t/ha)

AG

B C

(t/

ha)

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

-10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25

predicted Dead Wood C (t/ha)

Dead

Wo

od

C (

t/h

a)

Double sampling and improving precision

From plot to area• LiDAR allows the development of “wall to wall” carbon

maps based on the shown relationships

Improving models and assessing tree variability

All returns percentile heights

Cover (1st canopy returns / 1st returns in plot)

LAI depth

P50

(p-values)

Cover

% (p-values)Model R2 (%)

Log(LAI_down to 8m) 0.0002 0.0014 92

Log(LAI down to 6m) 0.0004 0.2467 86

Using LiDAR as carbon assessment tool

•Multipurpose & cost effective (carbon stocks, tree heights, DTM,

canopy condition)

•Various scales (tree, plot, stand, landscape)

•Objective unbiased method (reducing sampling error)

Applied with the right sampling design:

•measure stocks and changes

•detect the unpredictable

•statistically sound and precise

•Usable for company inventory, ETS and LUCAS (synchronising

measurement approaches)

Funding parties:

FRST, Ministry for the Environment

Thank you

Stocking assessment

Coming back to individual forests

• National inventory forms the baseline

• Links to ETS, Kyoto, EBEX®, etc and therefore schemes that allow forest owner to take part (profit from it and showing responsibility).

• Variety of possible accounting methods available but need to be approved, effective and accurate.

• Development of new methods will help to improve carbon stock assessment on individual properties

„Walk through the forest‟

LIDAR

Pool allocation model

How can such data be used?

Volume and Biomass