Quantifying the Carbon Storage in Urban Trees Using Multispectral ALS Data

This paper presents a new method for quantifying the carbon storage in urban trees using multispectral airborne laser scanning (ALS) data. This method takes the full advantage of multispectral ALS range and intensity data and shows the feasibility of quantifies the carbon storage in urban trees. Our method consists of four steps: multispectral ALS data processing, vegetation isolation, dendrometric parameters estimation, and carbon storage modeling. Our results suggest that ALS-based dendrometric parameter estimation and allometric models can yield consistent performance and accurate estimation. Citywide carbon storage estimation is derived in this paper for the Town of Whitchurch-Stouffville, Ontario, Canada, by extrapolating the values within the study area to the entire city based on the specific proportion of each land cover type. The proposed method reveals the potential of multispectral ALS data in land cover mapping and carbon storage estimation at individual-tree level.