Analysis of the full waveform return pulse of laser altimeter systems is expected to increase the possibilities and accuracy in well-known applications of laser altimetry like DTM generation, forestry and earth surface analysis. NASA’s ICESat Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) was launched in 2003 and acquires full waveform data along profiles covering the entire earth. In this study, the...

Introduction: Photon-counting lidar altimeters and imagers are the most efficient possible since each range measurement requires only one detected photon as opposed to hundreds or thousands in conventional laser pulse time of flight (TOF) altimeters. The GLAS altimeter on ICESat-I, for example, has a minimum detectable signal corresponding to roughly 100 photoelectrons but can produce in excess...

We present new coarse resolution (0.5× 0.5) vegetation height and vegetation-cover fraction data sets between 60 S and 60 N for use in climate models and ecological models. The data sets are derived from 2003–2009 measurements collected by the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) on the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat), the only LiDAR instrument that provides close to global...

Estimation of forest carbon storage is a critical challenge for understanding the global carbon cycle because it dominates the dynamics of the terrestrial carbon cycle. Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) system has a unique capability for estimating accurately forest canopy height, which has a direct relationship and can provide better understood to the aboveground carbon storage. To test the ...

Boudreau et al (2008) reports on a three-phase statistical framework for estimating forest biomass and carbon using a space LiDAR – ICESat/GLAS – as a large-area sampling tool to inventory the Province of Quebec. An airborne profiling LiDAR was used to tie ground plot observations to GLAS pulses by overflying both plots and pulses to facilitate development of two sets of regression equations. T...

[1] The world’s oceans can potentially be used as an extended target for achieving a radiometric calibration of space borne lidar if the reflective properties of the surface can be accurately predicted from available environmental data such as wind speed. To test current understanding of ocean reflectance we compare surface pulse returns measured with the 1064 nm altimetry channel of the Geosci...