LiDAR canopy structure 2014

LiDAR derived canopy structure and topography across SAFE, Maliau Conservation Area and Danum Valley in Malaysian Borneo. These maps were produced following a survey by the Natural Environment Research Council Airborne Research Facility in 2014. Georeferenced point clouds were tiled, noise points were removed and ground points classified using Lastools. Digital terrain models (DTM) were produced from classified ground points at 10 m resolution. Point clouds were normalised (through ground subtraction) to produce 1 m resolution pitfree canopy height model (CHM) rasters. Normalised CHMs were also used to produce 20 m resolution plant area density (PAD) profile and plant area index (PAI) rasters as well as a number of statistics calculated for 20 m resolution vertical profiles. Point density is reported as a means to assess data quality, higher values indicate more data and are likely to be more reliable, particularly for dense tall forests, which depend on high point densities for accurate ground detection. Above-ground carbon density was calculated at 1 ha resolution from top of canopy height and gap fraction (derived from canopy height models) also at 1 ha resolution.