Spaceborne Canopy Height Products Should Be Complemented With Airborne Laser Scanning Data: Toward a European Canopy Height Model

This open-access article evaluates the reliability of global and continental-scale vegetation canopy height models derived from spaceborne remote sensing by comparing them with high-resolution airborne laser scanning (ALS) data, with a focus on European landscapes. The authors show that current spaceborne canopy height products exhibit significant errors relative to ALS measurements and argue that integrating spaceborne data with ALS can improve accuracy. They discuss the need for harmonized data processing, standardized workflows, and expanded ALS reference datasets to support the development of a European canopy height model and future Earth observation missions, potentially including satellite LiDAR constellations for consistent global monitoring of vegetation structure.