GTDX Fusion: Pantropical Forest Height and Biomass Maps

Mexico, Gabon, French Guiana, and the Amazon Basin are covered by maps of forest canopy height and aboveground biomass at 25 m and 100 m spatial resolutions. The maps result from fusing NASA GEDI lidar footprint data from 2019-2021 with TanDEM-X radar imagery from 2011-2020. The dataset includes uncertainty layers, a regional modeling parameter, and forest disturbance information identifying changes between 2011 and 2020.

Use Cases

• Estimating forest carbon stocks based on aboveground biomass maps.
• Monitoring forest disturbance and recovery timelines using the year-of-last-disturbance layer.
• Calibrating and validating other remote sensing products with the high-resolution canopy height data.
• Assessing regional model performance variability using the ancillary modeling parameter layer.

Strengths

• Fuses two high-quality satellite data sources (GEDI lidar and TanDEM-X radar) for improved accuracy.
• Provides pixel-level uncertainty estimates for both canopy height and biomass.
• Covers a multi-year period from 2011 to 2021, enabling change detection.
• Offers high spatial detail with resolutions of 25 m and 100 m.

Limitations

• Metadata completeness is medium; specific column names and dataset size are not provided.
• Conflicting 'last updated' dates exist between platforms (2026-04-09 on datagov vs. 2021-08-18 on nasa_earthdata).
• Spatial coverage is limited to four specific tropical regions.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Data fusion of GEDI Version 2 lidar footprints and TanDEM-X Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) images using a generalized hierarchical model-based (GHMB) framework.

Time Range

2011-01-06 to 2021-08-18

Freshness

2026-04-09 (from datagov, though this conflicts with the data end date)

Geography

Mexico, Gabon, French Guiana, and the Amazon Basin.