Examining the Impact of Topography and Vegetation on Existing Forest Canopy Height Products from ICESat-2 ATLAS/GEDI Data

Forest canopy height (FCH) is an important variable for estimating forest biomass and ecosystem carbon sequestration. Spaceborne LiDAR data have been used to create wall-to-wall FCH maps, such as the forest tree height map of China (FCHChina), Global Forest Canopy Height 2020 (GFCH2020), and Global Forest Canopy Height 2019 (GFCH2019). However, these products lack comprehensive assessment. This study used airborne LiDAR data from various topographies (e.g., plain, hill, and mountain) to assess the impacts of different topographical and vegetation characteristics on spaceborne LiDAR-derived FCH products. The results show that GEDI–FCH demonstrates better accuracy in plain and hill regions, while ICESat-2 ATLAS–FCH shows superior accuracy in the mountainous region. The difficulty in accurately capturing photons from sparse tree canopies by ATLAS and the geolocation errors of GEDI has led to partial underestimations of FCH products in plain areas. Spaceborne LiDAR FCH retrievals are more accurate in hilly regions, with a root mean square error (RMSE) of 4.99 m for ATLAS and 3.85 m for GEDI. GEDI–FCH is significantly affected by slope in mountainous regions, with an RMSE of 13.26 m. For wall-to-wall FCH products, the availability of FCH data is limited in plain areas. Optimal accuracy is achieved in hilly regions by FCHChina, GFCH2020, and GFCH2019, with RMSEs of 5.52 m, 5.07 m, and 4.85 m, respectively. In mountainous regions, the accuracy of wall-to-wall FCH products is influenced by factors such as tree canopy coverage, forest cover types, and slope. However, some of these errors may stem from directly using current ATL08 and GEDI L2A FCH products for mountainous FCH estimation. Introducing accurate digital elevation model (DEM) data can improve FCH retrieval from spaceborne LiDAR to some extent. This research improves our understanding of the existing FCH products and provides valuable insights into methods for more effectively extracting accurate FCH from spaceborne LiDAR data. Further research should focus on developing suitable approaches to enhance the FCH retrieval accuracy from spaceborne LiDAR data and integrating multi-source data and modeling algorithms to produce accurate wall-to-wall FCH distribution in a large area.