Achievement

BART fellows (April Chiriboga and Brady Hardiman) and BART faculty (Gil Bohrer, Chris Vogel, and Peter Curtis) collaborated on research comparing estimates of forest biomass made using ground-based LiDAR measurements and measurements of tree diameter and stem dissections. This is an example of the application of a tool used primarily by atmospheric scientists to an ecological question. While results showed that LiDAR measurements underestimate tree height and thus biomass, site-specific corrections made to the LIDAR data can remove this bias and therefore provide a new technique for the determination of biomass at scales where biometric measurements are impractical and over large, heterogeneous landscapes. This research was presented this past summer at a conference on Carbon in Northern Forests: Integration of Research and Management.