Data of vegetation structure metrics retrieved from airborne laser scanning surveys for European demonstration sites

This dataset provides a standardized collection of rasterized Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) metrics in GeoTIFF format, derived from country-wide airborne laser scanning (ALS) data across seven demonstration sites in five European countries: Mols Bjerge National Park (Denmark), Reserve Naturelle Nationale du Bagnas (France), Oostvaardersplassen (Netherlands), Salisbury Plain (United Kingdom), Knepp Estate (United Kingdom), Monks Wood (United Kingdom), and the island of Comino (Malta). The sites range in areal size from 0.08 km² to 54 km² and include habitat types such as forests, broadleaf and conifer woodlands, small plantations, dry and wet grasslands, marshes, reedbeds, arable fields, farmland, scrublands and mediterranean garigue. A total of 35 LiDAR metrics were calculated, of which 28 represent vegetation structural attributes. These include vegetation height (seven metrics), vegetation cover (fourteen metrics), and vegetation vertical variability (seven metrics). Additionally, seven metrics describe point density (one metric), eigenvalues (three metrics), and normal vectors (three metrics). The rasterized LiDAR metrics have a spatial resolution of 10 m, with coverage and extent defined by shapefiles corresponding to each demonstration site. The raw ALS point clouds were clipped to the site boundaries and processed with the 'Laserfarm' workflow, a standardized computational workflow that includes modular pipelines for re-tiling, normalization, feature extraction, and rasterization. Laserfarm employs the feature extraction module of the open-source 'Laserchicken' software to compute the LiDAR metrics. The workflow was implemented using the IT services of the Dutch national facility for information and communication technology, SURF. The clipped LiDAR point clouds are available through a public repository, except for the LiDAR point clouds from Comino, Malta, which are not publicly available. The 35 rasterized LiDAR metrics (GeoTIFF files, 10 m resolution) from all sites, including Comino, as well as the corresponding site boundary shapefiles (geospatial vector format), are provided in a Zenodo repository. Additionally, the Jupyter Notebooks with Python code for executing the Laserfarm workflow are available to facilitate reproducibility and further computational applications. Users should note that the rasterized LiDAR metrics may contain zero or NA values, particularly over water surfaces, with the pulse penetration ratio metric potentially indicating false high vegetation cover over water. Users may reclassify or mask areas with zero values accordingly. Some pixels exhibit abnormal vegetation height values, which can be filtered before analysis. Certain striping patterns, likely resulting from overlapping flight lines and increased point density, are present in some metrics, though their overall impact appears minimal. This dataset enables diverse applications, including canopy height measurements, mapping of hedgerows, treelines, and forest patches, as well as characterizing vegetation density, vertical stratification, and habitat openness. It supports landscape-scale habitat analysis and contributes to the standardization of vegetation metrics from ALS data for site-specific ecological monitoring (e.g., Natura 2000). Moreover, the dataset demonstrates the automated execution of LiDAR data processing workflows, which is crucial for establishing a transnational and multi-site biodiversity and ecosystem observation network.