Characterizing the structural complexity of the Earth's forests with spaceborne lidar.

ABSTRACT: Forest structural complexity is a key element of ecosystem functioning, impacting light environments, nutrient cycling, biodiversity, and habitat quality. Addressing the need for a comprehensive global assessment of actual forest structural complexity, we derive a near-global map of 3D canopy complexity using data from the GEDI spaceborne lidar mission. These data show that tropical forests harbor most of the high complexity observations, while less than 20% of temperate forests reached median levels of tropical complexity. Structural complexity in tropical forests is more strongly related to canopy attributes from lower and middle waveform layers, whereas in temperate forests upper and middle layers are more influential. Globally, forests exhibit robust scaling relationships between compl

SUBMITTER: de Conto T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11405527 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature