Terrestrial Lidar Scans of Forest-Tundra Ecotone in Alaska, 2016

NASA's ABoVE project provides terrestrial lidar scanning point cloud data from 10 research plots along the forest-tundra ecotone in Alaska's Brooks Range. Data were collected in June 2016 using a Leica ScanStation C10 laser instrument, with processed point spacing less than 1 centimeter. This high-resolution 3D data enables the derivation of ecological metrics for canopy structure and surface topography.

Use Cases

• Modeling 3D canopy structure and biomass based on high-resolution point cloud data.
• Analyzing surface topography and microtopographic features at sub-centimeter resolution.
• Studying vegetation transition zones (ecotones) using spatially explicit structural data.
• Calibrating or validating airborne or satellite remote sensing products with ground-based lidar.

Strengths

• Point spacing is less than 1 centimeter, indicating very high spatial resolution.
• Data were collected from 10 specific research plots along a defined ecological gradient.
• Acquired with a named, professional-grade instrument (Leica ScanStation C10).

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data is from a single time point (June 2016), limiting temporal analysis.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Terrestrial lidar scanning from multiple scan positions per plot.

Time Range

2016-06

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 19:51:49.398111; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Brooks Range, Alaska, USA, south of Chandalar Shelf and Atigun Pass.