GEDI reveals decline in overstorey and increase in understorey canopy cover of protected forests in Central Europe since 2019
Authors/Creators
- 1. TUD Dresden University of Technology, Institute of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing
- 2. Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Faculty of Environmental Sciences, Department of Spatial Sciences,
- 3. TUD Dresden University of Technology, Institute of Forest Botany and Forest Zoology
Description
Drought and insect disturbances have resulted in widespread forest dieback in the forests of Central Europe since 2018. However, the implications of these changes in forest cover on the vertical structure, such as the canopy cover of the overstorey and understorey, have yet to be investigated at a large scale. By making use of the Global
Ecosystem Dynamic Investigation (GEDI) spaceborne waveform lidar, we show here that overstorey canopy cover has declined and understorey canopy cover has increased in both coniferous and broadleaved protected forests in Central Europe since 2019. The observed loss of overstorey canopy cover is consistent with results from
other remote sensing-based forest monitoring products. However, only GEDI has the capability to detect the increase in understorey canopy cover. For example, in Harz Mountains in Germany, overstorey canopy cover decreases by approximately 4.45 % per year in coniferous forests and by approximately 1.57 % per year in broadleaved forests, while understorey canopy cover increases by approximately 1.18 % and 0.59 %, respectively. For coniferous forests, we find that changes in overstorey canopy cover have a significant negative correlation (r = – 0.78, p < 0.01) with changes in understorey canopy cover. However, this relationship is not significant for broadleaved forests. This implies that canopy mortality in coniferous forests is more likely to trigger succession in the understorey than in broadleaved forests. This study demonstrates a new perspective for monitoring the dynamics of forest overstorey and understorey using spaceborne lidar, which can help improve understanding of feedbacks between forests and climate
Notes
Xiao Liu acknowledges funding by the China Scholarship Council (Project No. 202006270054) and by the TUD Dresden University of Technology Graduate Academy. Xiao Liu, Vítˇezslav Moudrý, and Matthias Forkel acknowledge funding through the EarthBridge project (Building Bridges between Earth Observation and Environmental Sciences, Project No. 101079310) from the European Union Horizon 2020 program. The authors thank Christine Wessollek for her valuable suggestions on data visualisation. We thank Christopher Marrs for his constructive comments regarding interpreting analysis results and proofreading. We would like to thank the editors and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
Notes
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
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Additional details
Related works
- Is supplemented by
- Dataset: 10.1111/ddi.13682 (DOI)