Radar backscatter and lidar waveform modeling of forest canopies

Providing additional data on forest spatial structure will improve the biomass estimation accuracy from radar data. Recently developed airborne lidar and future spaceborne sensor will provide unique data on canopy geometry and sub-canopy topography. Combined use of radar and lidar data has potential to improve our capability of mapping biomass regionally and globally. As an important step in the algorithm development, three-dimensional radar backscatter and lidar waveform models are parameterized using the same forest stand structure. This paper briefly describes some preliminary results, in the studies of the potential use of radar and lidar data in forest biomass estimates.