Forest biomass is critically important for forest dynamics in the carbon cycle. However, large-scale AGB mapping applications from remote sensing data still carry large uncertainty. In this study, an AGB estimation model was first established with three different remote sensing datasets of GF-2, Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8. Next, the optimal scale estimation result was considered as a reference AGB to obtain the relative true AGB distribution at different scales based on the law of conservation of mass, and the error of the scale effect of AGB estimation at various spatial resolutions was analyzed. Then, the information entropy of land use type was calculated to identify the heterogeneity of pixels. Finally, a scale conversion method for the entropy-weighted index was developed to correct the scale error of the estimated AGB results from coarse-resolution remote sensing images. The results showed that the random forest model had better prediction accuracy for GF-2 (4 m), Sentinel-2 (10 m) and Landsat-8 (30 m) AGB mapping. The determination coefficient between predicted and measured AGB was 0.5711, 0.4819 and 0.4321, respectively. Compared to uncorrected AGB, R2 between scale-corrected results and relative true AGB increased from 0.6226 to 0.6725 for Sentinel-2, and increased from 0.5910 to 0.6704 for Landsat-8. The scale error was effectively corrected. This study can provide a reference for forest AGB estimation and scale error reduction for AGB production upscaling with consideration of the spatial heterogeneity of the forest surface.
Stand age is a significant factor when investigating forest resource management. How to obtain age data at a sub-compartment level on a large regional scale conveniently and in real time has become an urgent scientific challenge in forestry research. In this study, we established two strategies for stand-age estimation at sub-compartment and pixel levels, specifically object-based and pixel-based approaches. First, the relationship between canopy height and stand age was established based on field measurement data, which was achieved at the Mao’er Mountain Experimental Forest Farm in 2020 and 2021. The stand age was estimated using the relationship between the canopy height, the stand age, and the canopy-height map, which was generated from multi-resource remote sensing data. The results showed that the validation accuracy of the object-based estimation results of the stand age and the canopy height was better than that of the pixel-based estimation results, with a root mean squared error (RMSE) increase of 40.17% and 33.47%, respectively. Then, the estimated stand age was divided into different age classes and compared with the forest inventory data (FID). As a comparison, the object-based estimation results had better consistency with the FID in the region of the broad-leaved forests and the coniferous forests. In addition, the pixel-based estimation results had better accuracy in the mixed forest regions. This study provided a reference for estimating stand age and met the requirements for stand-age data at the pixel and sub-compartment levels for studies involving different forestry applications.