Airborne laser scanning data for the Sabah Biodiversity Experiment from 2013 and 2020

Please contact tobydjackson [at] gmail.com if you have any questions about this data.

The Sabah Biodiversity Experiment covers a 500 ha area, with 124 plots, each 4 ha in size. The original experimental design is described in Hector et al (2011) https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2011.0094. 

This repository contains airborne laser scanning data collected in 2013 and 2020 over the Sabah Biodiversity Experiment. The canopy height models and digital terrain models are provided in raster format (chm_2013.tif, chm_2020.tif & dtm.tif). The raw laser scanning point clouds are provided as laz files within a zipped folder for each year (2013_DSM_small_tiles.zip & 2020_DSM_small_tiles.zip). 

The plot metadata are provided as a zipped shapefile 'SBE_plots_corrected_with_GPS_2025.zip'. The columns in this shapefile are:

1. plot - the plot id
2. block - whether the plot is in the north or south block of the experiment
3. species_ri - species richness of the seedlings that were planted
4. species_co - species code
5.  climber_cu - whether or not the lianas (climbers) were cut in this plot
6.  generic_di - generic diversity of the planted seedlings
7. canopy_typ - classification of the seedlings into 'thick' or 'thin' canopies, where thin have only tall species while thick have a mixture
8. canopy_str - classification of seedlings into short (S), medium (M), tall (T) or combined (SMT)
9. planted - whether or not enrichment planting was carried out
10. treatment - a combination of previous variables used for plotting
11. random - whether or not the plot location was randomly assigned. Some were not possible for logistical reasons
12. name - a simple classification of the treatment type used for plotting
13. name_ha - a combination of previous variables used for plotting
14. ID - a unique identifier         
15. tile_area - the area of the plot 
16. geometry - the polygon representing the plot

The whole airborne laser scan data spans approximately 5.075 to 5.1 degrees of latitude and 117.64 to 117.67 degrees of longitude.  We thank the Sabah Biodiversity Council and Danum Valley Managament Council for access and assistance with the laser scanning data collection. The data was collected under Sabah Biodiversity Council permit number JKM/MBS.1000-2/2 JLD.9 (122).