An UV full-waveform airborne LiDAR as a demonstrator for future space missions dedicated to forest studies

A full-waveform UV lidar ULICE has been used as a demonstrator for future space missions dedicated to forest survey at the global scale. The airborne UV lidar permitted the sampling of representative mid-latitude forests in France. An end to end simulator was built up to simulate spaceborne lidar measurements using as reference the airborne measurements. The sampling acquired on oaks, maritime pines and poplars during winter and summer times are considered to establish a link-budget for different typical orbits always used for past and current space missions (ISS, ICESat and CALIPSO). The lidar signal to noise ratio, the optimal laser footprint size, the required energy for the lidar system, and the signal distortion due to the surface slope are studied.