30 M Gridded Forest Canopy Height Mapping for New England Region, USA by Using ALOS Repeat-Pass SAR Interferometry and GEDI LiDAR Data

This paper presents 30 m gridded mosaic of forest canopy height for the New England region of the United States, encompassing Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, covering a total area of 18 million hectares. The forest height estimates were derived based on ALOS repeat-pass SAR interferometry (InSAR) observations (100 InSAR pairs) and a semi-empirical physical model [1]. sd Further efforts were devoted to automating this approach for generating large-scale forest height products and evaluate the performance of the products at different sites (e.g., flat, hilly area, etc). As validated against NASA’s LVIS airborne LiDAR, this approach presents an accuracy of 3–4 m (RMSE) over flat area and an accuracy of 4-5 m per sub-hectare pixel over hilly area on the order of sub-hectare pixel (0.81 ha). This approach demonstrates promising values in the context of combining low-frequency InSAR observations and LiDAR measurements from existing and future spaceborne missions.