Global Canopy Top Height Estimates from GEDI LIDAR for 2020

Global canopy top height estimates derived from GEDI L1B LIDAR waveforms collected between April and July 2020. The data, produced by researchers from ETH Zurich, provides footprint-level predictions of the RH98 metric for latitudes between 51.6° North and South. It is stored in HDF5 files corresponding to the original GEDI orbit files.

Use Cases

• Modeling forest biomass and carbon stocks based on canopy height.
• Monitoring changes in forest structure over time by comparing with the 2019 dataset.
• Validating and calibrating other satellite-derived vegetation height products.
• Analyzing the relationship between canopy height and biodiversity or habitat quality.

Strengths

• Provides a global spatial coverage between 51.6° N and S.
• Data is derived from GEDI LIDAR, a state-of-the-art spaceborne instrument for vertical structure measurement.
• Includes companion data from April-July 2019 for temporal analysis.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Temporal coverage is limited to a specific 4-month period in 2020.

Provenance

Source

GEDI L1B Version 1 data processed by researchers at ETH Zurich.

Collection Method

Canopy top height (RH98) estimated from LIDAR waveforms using deep ensemble methods.

Time Range

April-July 2020

Geography

Global, between 51.6° North and South latitude.