Scientists at the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts have developed vegetation height maps for the entire tropics at very fine spatial scales. These first-of its-kind high resolution maps can help researchers estimate forest cover, monitor biodiversity and wildlife habitats, and manage and monitor timber.
Lead Scientist Josef Kellndorfer and his team combined more than 17,000 fine-scale radar images obtained by the Japanese ALOS satellite, with height measurements obtained by lidar on NASA’s ICESat/GLAS mission, and developed continuous vegetation height maps for North and South America, Africa, and Asia for the year 2007.
