Forest Aboveground Biomass Estimation with GEDI and ICESat-2 in Boreal Forests

Forest aboveground biomass is a key environmental variable needed for constraining models of the global carbon cycle, monitoring stocks and fluxes of carbon in forests, and optimizing forest management toward climate mitigation. To date, limited satellite data have been available that are sensitive to Aboveground Biomass Density (AGBD), and the availability of new satellite lidar data streams from NASA's Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) [1] and Ice Cloud and Elevation Satellite (ICESat-2) [2] enable a new generation of AGBD estimates representative of 2018–2022 conditions. Here we explore the transferability of GEDI's AGBD estimation framework to ICESat-2. We compare distribution of Relative Height (RH) metrics from both products between 50 and 52° N, and find that ICESat-2's RH metrics are biased high compared to GEDI. We reprocess ICESat-2 RH metrics to make them more comparable to GEDI height metrics, and present a comparison of biomass estimates based on the original and new ICESat-2 RH metrics in boreal forests.