La Selva Forest Canopy Height and Carbon Estimates from LiDAR

March 1998 and March 2005 LiDAR surveys provide 100-meter resolution GeoTIFFs of land-use, canopy height, and aboveground carbon estimates for La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica. A supplementary look-up table relates modeled height changes to stand characteristics like age and carbon content. NASA produced this dataset to test the scale-dependency and accuracy of the Ecosystem Demography (ED) model for predicting vegetation dynamics and carbon flux.

Use Cases

• Validating the Ecosystem Demography (ED) model's predictions of carbon flux and vegetation structure using the provided canopy height and carbon estimate layers.
• Analyzing land-use change and forest stand characteristics over a seven-year period using the 1998 and 2005 time slices.
• Relating changes in LiDAR-derived canopy height to changes in forest age and carbon content using the included look-up table.
• Studying biomass dynamics and canopy structure in a tropical forest ecosystem at a 1-hectare resolution.

Strengths

• Provides high-resolution (100-m/1-ha) geospatial data for two distinct time points (1998, 2005), enabling change detection.
• Includes a modeled look-up table connecting canopy height changes to specific stand characteristics like age and carbon.
• Dataset was specifically designed to test the accuracy and scale-dependency of a major ecosystem model (Ecosystem Demography).

Limitations

• Key technical details like row count, file size, and specific column names are unavailable from all sources.
• Sources conflict on the last updated date, with one listing 2005-03-31 and another listing 2026-03 13 (likely a metadata refresh).

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Derived from LiDAR data collected at La Selva Biological Station, Costa Rica.

Time Range

1998 to 2005

Freshness

2026-03-13 04:49:21.446888

Geography

La Selva Biological Station, Costa Rica