Characterizing the structural complexity of the Earth's forests with spaceborne lidar.
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 39284819.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-52468-2 and PMC identifier 11405527.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Forest structural complexity is a key element of ecosystem functioning, impacting light environments, nutrient cycling, biodiversity, and habitat quality. Addressing the need for a comprehensive global assessment of actual forest structural complexity, we derive a near-global map of 3D canopy complexity using data from the GEDI spaceborne lidar mission. These data show that tropical forests harbor most of the high complexity observations, while less than 20% of temperate forests reached median levels of tropical complexity. Structural complexity in tropical forests is more strongly related to canopy attributes from lower and middle waveform layers, whereas in temperate forests upper and middle layers are more influential. Globally, forests exhibit robust scaling relationships between complexity and canopy height, but these vary geographically and by biome. Our results offer insights into the spatial distribution of forest structural complexity and emphasize the importance of considering biome-specific and fine-scale variations for ecological research and management applications. The GEDI Waveform Structural Complexity Index data product, derived from our analyses, provides researchers and conservationists with a single, easily interpretable metric by combining various aspects of canopy structure.