Start Year: 2011      Duration: 2.00 year(s)

Abstract:
Spatial structure of vegetation including plant height and biomass are important factors that influence the exchanges of matter and energy between the landscape and atmosphere, and the biodiversity of ecosystems. The combined use of lidar's direct sampling measurements and the areal mapping capabilities of radar and optical sensors create a real possibility and opportunity to map global ecosystem structures and functions that link to carbon dynamics. Current data sources (imagery data from LANDSAT, MODIS, SRTM, PALSAR, and lidar data from GLAS, LVIS) provide adequate data for producing regional biomass maps with the accuracies and spatial resolutions that couldn't be achieved before. Since early 1980s, I have been an investigator of various projects in NASA Programs such as SIR-B, SIR-B continuation, SIR-C/XSAR, FED, BOREAS, LCLUC, TE, and others. During these projects, I have developed radiative transfer models for microwave (3D polarimetric and interferometric radar backscatter models), and for lidar remote sensing (lidar waveform model), and algorithms of using combined forest growth and remote sensing models, and neural networks or statistic models for retrieval of forest parameters from radar, lidar and optical data. Biomass mapping from SAR data were investigated at both flat and mountainous areas. Regional biomass maps at Central Siberia and Russian Far East/Northern China have been produced using GLAS samples and MODIS data from our projects. In responding to NASA's call for investigators to participate in the pilot initiative for the development of a Carbon Monitoring System (CMS). I'm eager to be involved in the efforts on production and evaluation of a U.S. biomass and carbon storage product, and make my contributions to the goal. This proposal is for a membership in the Science Definition Team working closely with the NASA Centers in the production and validation of the CMS biomass and carbon storage pilot products for Carbon Monitoring System (CMS). In addition to participate in reviewing and providing scientific and technical input regarding the overall development plan for the biomass product, I will spend additional time to 1) test our current algorithms for biomass estimation at other sites in US; 2) improve data processing method and algorithm for biomass mapping in mountainous areas from lidar and SAR data; and 3) investigate the scale issue between field plot, lidar footprint, SAR and optical sensors (LANDSAT and MODIS) data when the biomass estimation models developed at one scale being used in another scale.