Information on the spatial distribution of aboveground biomass (AGB) over large areas is needed for understanding and managing processes involved in the carbon cycle and supporting international policies for climate change mitigation and adaption. Furthermore, these products provide important baseline data for the development of sustainable management strategies to local stakeholders. The use of remote sensing data can provide spatially explicit information of AGB from local to global scales. In this study, we mapped national Mexican forest AGB using satellite remote sensing data and a machine learning approach. We modelled AGB using two scenarios: (1) extensive national forest inventory (NFI), and (2) airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) as reference data. Finally, we propagated uncertainties from field measurements to LiDAR-derived AGB and to the national wall-to-wall forest AGB map. The estimated AGB maps (NFI- and LiDAR-calibrated) showed similar goodness-of-fit statistics (R2, Root Mean Square Error (RMSE)) at three different scales compared to the independent validation data set. We observed different spatial patterns of AGB in tropical dense forests, where no or limited number of NFI data were available, with higher AGB values in the LiDAR-calibrated map. We estimated much higher uncertainties in the AGB maps based on two-stage up-scaling method (i.e., from field measurements to LiDAR and from LiDAR-based estimates to satellite imagery) compared to the traditional field to satellite up-scaling. By removing LiDAR-based AGB pixels with high uncertainties, it was possible to estimate national forest AGB with similar uncertainties as calibrated with NFI data only. Since LiDAR data can be acquired much faster and for much larger areas compared to field inventory data, LiDAR is attractive for repetitive large scale AGB mapping. In this study, we showed that two-stage up-scaling methods for AGB estimation over large areas need to be analyzed and validated with great care. The uncertainties in the LiDAR-estimated AGB propagate further in the wall-to-wall map and can be up to 150%. Thus, when a two-stage up-scaling method is applied, it is crucial to characterize the uncertainties at all stages in order to generate robust results. Considering the findings mentioned above LiDAR can be used as an extension to NFI for example for areas that are difficult or not possible to access.

Climate variables carry signatures of variability at multiple timescales. How these modes of variability are reflected in the state of the terrestrial biosphere is still not quantified or discussed at the global scale. Here, we set out to gain a global understanding of the relevance of different modes of variability in vegetation greenness and its covariability with climate. We used >30 years of remote sensing records of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) to characterize biosphere variability across timescales from submonthly oscillations to decadal trends using discrete Fourier decomposition. Climate data of air temperature (T_air) and precipitation (Prec) were used to characterize atmosphere–biosphere covariability at each timescale. Our results show that short-term (intra-annual) and longer-term (interannual and longer) modes of variability make regionally highly important contributions to NDVI variability: short-term oscillations focus in the tropics where they shape 27 % of NDVI variability. Longer-term oscillations shape 9 % of NDVI variability, dominantly in semiarid shrublands. Assessing dominant timescales of vegetation–climate covariation, a natural surface classification emerges which captures patterns not represented by conventional classifications, especially in the tropics. Finally, we find that correlations between variables can differ and even invert signs across timescales. For southern Africa for example, correlation between NDVI and T_air is positive for the seasonal signal but negative for short-term and longer-term oscillations, indicating that both short- and long-term temperature anomalies can induce stress on vegetation dynamics. Such contrasting correlations between timescales exist for 15 % of vegetated areas for NDVI with T_air and 27 % with Prec, indicating global relevance of scale-specific climate sensitivities. Our analysis provides a detailed picture of vegetation–climate covariability globally, characterizing ecosystems by their intrinsic modes of temporal variability. We find that (i) correlations of NDVI with climate can differ between scales, (ii) nondominant subsignals in climate variables may dominate the biospheric response, and (iii) possible links may exist between short-term and longer-term scales. These heterogeneous ecosystem responses on different timescales may depend on climate zone and vegetation type, and they are to date not well understood and do not always correspond to transitions in dominant vegetation types. These scale dependencies can be a benchmark for vegetation model evaluation and for comparing remote sensing products.

Information on the spatial distribution of forest structure parameters (e.g., aboveground biomass, vegetation height) are crucial for assessing terrestrial carbon stocks and emissions. In this study, we sought to assess the potential and merit of multi-temporal dual-polarised L-band observations for vegetation height estimation in tropical deciduous and evergreen forests of Mexico. We estimated vegetation height using dual-polarised L-band observations and a machine learning approach. We used airborne LiDAR-based vegetation height for model training and for result validation. We split LiDAR-based vegetation height into training and test data using two different approaches, i.e., considering and ignoring spatial autocorrelation between training and test data. Our results indicate that ignoring spatial autocorrelation leads to an overoptimistic model’s predictive performance. Accordingly, a spatial splitting of the reference data should be preferred in order to provide realistic retrieval accuracies. Moreover, the model’s predictive performance increases with an increasing number of spatial predictors and training samples, but saturates at a specific level (i.e., at 12 dual-polarised L-band backscatter measurements and at around 20% of all training samples). In consideration of spatial autocorrelation between training and test data, we determined an optimal number of L-band observations and training samples as a trade-off between retrieval accuracy and data collection effort. In summary, our study demonstrates the merit of multi-temporal ScanSAR L-band observations for estimation of vegetation height at a larger scale and provides a workflow for robust predictions of this parameter.

In this study, we analyze Sentinel-1 time series data to characterize the observed seasonality of different land cover classes in eastern Thuringia, Germany and to identify multi-temporal metrics for their classification. We assess the influence of different polarizations and different pass directions on the multi-temporal backscatter profile. The novelty of this approach is the determination of phenological parameters, based on a tool that has been originally developed for optical imagery. Furthermore, several additional multitemporal metrics are determined for the different classes, in order to investigate their separability for potential multi-temporal classification schemes. The results of the study show a seasonality for vegetation classes, which differs depending on the considered class: whereas pastures and broad-leaved forests show a decrease of the backscatter in VH polarization during summer, an increase of the backscatter in VH polarization is observed for coniferous forest. The observed seasonality is discussed together with meteorological information (precipitation and air temperature). Furthermore, a dependence of the backscatter of the pass direction (ascending/descending) is observed particularly for the urban land cover classes. Multi-temporal metrics indicate a good separability of principal land cover classes such as urban, agricultural and forested areas, but further investigation and use of seasonal parameters is needed for a distinct separation of specific forest sub-classes such as coniferous and deciduous.

There is no doubt that unmanned aerial systems (UAS) will play an increasing role in Earth observation in the near future. The field of application is very broad and includes aspects of environmental monitoring, security, humanitarian aid, or engineering. In particular, drones with camera systems are already widely used. The capability to compute ultra-high-resolution orthomosaics and three-dimensional (3D) point clouds from UAS imagery generates a wide interest in such systems, not only in the science community, but also in industry and agencies. In particular, forestry sciences benefit from ultra-high-structural and spectral information as regular tree level-based monitoring becomes feasible. There is a great need for this kind of information as, for example, due to the spring and summer droughts in Europe in the years 2018/2019, large quantities of individual trees were damaged or even died. This study focuses on selective logging at the level of individual trees using repeated drone flights. Using the new generation of UAS, which allows for sub-decimeter-level positioning accuracies, a change detection approach based on bi-temporal UAS acquisitions was implemented. In comparison to conventional UAS, the effort of implementing repeated drone flights in the field was low, because no ground control points needed to be surveyed. As shown in this study, the geometrical offset between the two collected datasets was below 10 cm across the site, which enabled a direct comparison of both datasets without the need for post-processing (e.g., image matching). For the detection of logged trees, we utilized the spectral and height differences between both acquisitions. For their delineation, an object-based approach was employed, which was proven to be highly accurate (precision = 97.5%; recall = 91.6%). Due to the ease of use of such new generation, off-the-shelf consumer drones, their decreasing purchase costs, the quality of available workflows for data processing, and the convincing results presented here, UAS-based data can and should complement conventional forest inventory practices.

The REDD+ framework requires accurate es- timates of deforestation. To derive these estimates, ground measurements are supported by methods based on remote sensing data to automatically detect and delineate deforesta- tions over large areas. In particular in the tropics, optical data is seldom available due to cloud cover. As Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data overcomes this limitation, we performed a separability analysis of two statistical metrics based on the Sentinel-1 SAR signal over forested and deforested areas. We compared the range between the 5th and 95th temporal percentiles (PRange) and the Recurrence Quantification Analysis (RQA) Trend metric. In contrast to the PRange, the RQA Trend considers the temporal order of the SAR data acquisitions. This enables the estimation of the timing of deforestation events. We assessed the impact of polarisation, acquisition orbit, and despeckling on the separability between forested and deforested areas, and between different deforestation timings for two test sites in Mexico. We found that the choice of the orbit impacts the detectability of deforestation. In all cases VH data showed a higher separability between forest and deforestations than VV data. The PRange slightly outperformed RQA Trend in the separation between forest and deforestation. However, the RQA Trend exceeded the PRange in the separation between different deforestation timings. In this study C-Band data was used, although it is commonly not considered as the most suitable SAR frequency for forestry applications Nevertheless, our approach shows, the potential of dense C-Band time series to support the REDD+ framework.