Tree Crown Area, 50 cm 2-D Satellite Imagery, and Deep Learning

Compton Tucker, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Usage Details

In this project Blue Waters will be used to determine arid and semi-arid carbon stocks over millions of km², from the Sahara Desert southward to the savanna belt. Satellite imagery will be used to compute tree crown area and DEMs will be used to estimate vertical tree heights enabling a determination of woody tree biomass or woody carbon mass by allometry.

This work involves taking a very large volume of 50 cm satellite data and assembling mosaics by UTM Zone for processing. Deep learning will then be used to segment and map discrete tree crowns over millions of km². Associated tree crown shadow length and solar position will be used to determine tree crown height trigonometrically.  Tree heights will be compared to tree heights generated from the SETSM EarthDEM project.