Multispectral vs synthetic aperture radar data for canopy height estimation

Canopy Height (CH) is an important variable in any forest inventory, not only by its own information, but also as a proxy variable to estimate other parameters as the above-ground biomass. The CH information can also be helpful to understand the climate change trends, for forest management, and in decision support systems related to wildfires. The growing availability of Remote Sensing observations acquired from different sensors, create an alternative for the CH mapping to field campaigns and Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) missions. Here a comparison between using Multispectral and Synthetic Aperture Radar sensors for CH estimation is presented. Both used the same Regression Methodology, being achieved a R-2/RMSE between 43.71%-72.85%/0.85-4.03m for Multispectral and 42.12%-62.62%/0.96m-4.49m for SAR, for a total of 17 regions of interest. It is concluded that Multispectral data revealed to be more suitable for the CH mapping.