AfriSAR: Canopy Cover and Vertical Profile Metrics Derived from LVIS, Gabon, 2016 AfriSAR

This dataset includes footprint-level canopy structure products derived from data collected using NASA's Land, Vegetation, and Ice Sensor (LVIS) during flights over five forested sites in Gabon during February and March 2016. Three types of canopy structure information are included for each flight: 1) vertical profiles of canopy cover fraction in 1-meter bins, 2) vertical profiles of plant area index (PAI) in 1-meter bins, and 3) footprint summary data of total recorded energy, leaf area index, canopy cover fraction, and vertical foliage profiles in 10-meter bins. Canopy structure metrics are provided for each waveform (20-m footprint) collected by the LVIS instrument. These data were collected by NASA as part of the AfriSAR project. AfriSAR is a NASA collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), German Aerospace Center (DLR), and the Gabonese Space Agency (AGEOS) that is collecting data useful for deriving forest canopy structure and will help prepare for and calibrate current and upcoming spaceborne missions that aim to gauge the role of forests in Earth's carbon cycle.