%0 Journal Article
%T Estimating the Above-Ground Biomass in Miombo Savanna Woodlands (Mozambique, East Africa) Using L-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar Data
%A Jo£¿o M. B. Carreiras
%A Joana B. Melo
%A Maria J. Vasconcelos
%J Remote Sensing
%D 2013
%I MDPI AG
%R 10.3390/rs5041524
%X The quantification of forest above-ground biomass (AGB) is important for such broader applications as decision making, forest management, carbon (C) stock change assessment and scientific applications, such as C cycle modeling. However, there is a great uncertainty related to the estimation of forest AGB, especially in the tropics. The main goal of this study was to test a combination of field data and Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) Phased Array L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR) backscatter intensity data to reduce the uncertainty in the estimation of forest AGB in the Miombo savanna woodlands of Mozambique (East Africa). A machine learning algorithm, based on bagging stochastic gradient boosting (BagSGB), was used to model forest AGB as a function of ALOS PALSAR Fine Beam Dual (FBD) backscatter intensity metrics. The application of this method resulted in a coefficient of correlation (R) between observed and predicted (10-fold cross-validation) forest AGB values of 0.95 and a root mean square error of 5.03 Mg¡¤ha £¿1. However, as a consequence of using bootstrap samples in combination with a cross validation procedure, some bias may have been introduced, and the reported cross validation statistics could be overoptimistic. Therefore and as a consequence of the BagSGB model, a measure of prediction variability (coefficient of variation) on a pixel-by-pixel basis was also produced, with values ranging from 10 to 119% (mean = 25%) across the study area. It provides additional and complementary information regarding the spatial distribution of the error resulting from the application of the fitted model to new observations.
%K above-ground biomass
%K carbon
%K ALOS PALSAR
%K bagging stochastic gradient boosting
%K Miombo savanna woodland
%K Mozambique
%U http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/5/4/1524