Skip to main content

Advertisement

Springer Nature Link
Log in

GEDI4R: an R package for NASA’s GEDI level 4 A data downloading, processing and visualization

  • Software
  • Published:
Earth Science Informatics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Forest ecosystems’ structure and biomass monitoring are crucial for understanding the contribution of forests to the global greenhouse gas balance. NASA’s Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) mission collects waveform lidar data to estimate Above Ground Biomass Density (AGBD). While of great interest, GEDI data are challenging to download and pre-process and require coding expertise, limiting their usage. In this paper, we introduce GEDI4R, an open-source R package providing efficient methods for downloading, reading, clipping, visualizing, and exporting GEDI data. GEDI4R was tested over the whole of Italy, and more than 11 million GEDI pulses were downloaded in less than 10 hours. The GEDI pulse density in forests ranged between 132 per km2 (in the Friuli Venezia Giulia Italian administrative region) and 61 pulses per km2 (in Trentino Alto-Adige). A regional-level comparison between the official growing stock volume estimates reported in the last Italian forest inventory and the AGBD extracted from the GEDI data acquired over the forest revealed large correlations (r2 = 0.77). Our package facilitates the usage of GEDI AGBD data, which provides innovative information to monitor carbon cycle dynamics at the global scale.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6

Similar content being viewed by others

Code availability

The source code of the GEDI4R package is accessible via GitHub at https://github.com/VangiElia/GEDI4R. After the download and installation disk occupancy of the GEDI4R package is approximately 3 MB and it was tested on Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS platforms (Table 2).

References

  • Canadell JG, Raupach MR (2008) Managing forests for climate change mitigation. Science 320(5882):1456–1457. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1155458

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chen Q, McRoberts RE, Wang C, Radtke PJ (2016) Forest aboveground biomass mapping and estimation across multiple spatial scales using model-based inference. Remote Sens Environ 184:350–360. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2016.07.023

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Coops NC, Tompalski P, Goodbody TR, Queinnec M, Luther JE, Bolton DK, White JC, Wulder MA, van Lier OR, Hermosilla T (2021) Modelling lidar-derived estimates of forest attributes over space and time: a review of approaches and future trends. Remote Sens Environ 260:112477. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2021.112477

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • D’Amico G, Vangi E, Francini S, Giannetti F, Nicolaci A, Travaglini D, Massai L, Giambastiani Y, Terranova C, Chirici G. 2021. Are we ready for a National Forest Information System? State of the art of forest maps and airborne laser scanning data availability in Italy. IForest 14:144–154. https://doi.org/10.3832/ifor3648-014

  • De Papitto LD, Gasparini G, Di Cosmo P, Floris L (2021) A., Italian Forests, Selected results of the third National Forest Inventory INFC 2015. Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Biodiversity and Parks. Roma, Italia. vailable online: https://www.inventarioforestale.org/sites/default/files/datiinventario/pubb/Sintesi_INFC2015.pdf

  • Dubayah R, Blair JB, Goetz S, Fatoyinbo L, Hansen M, Healey S, Hofton M, Hurtt G, Keller J, Luthcke S, Armston J, Tang H, Duncanson L, Hancock S, Jantz P, Marseils S, Patterson PL, Qi W, Silva C (2020) The global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation: high-resolution laser ranging of the Earth’s forests and topography. Sci remote Sens 1:100002. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.srs.2020.100002

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dubayah RO, Armston J, Kellner JR, Duncanson L, Healey SP, Patterson PL, Hancock S, Tang H, Hofton MA, Blair JB, Luthcke SB (2021) GEDI L4A Footprint Level Aboveground Biomass Density, Version 1. ORNL DAAC, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA. https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/1907

  • Dubayah RO, Armston J, Kellner JR, Duncanson L, Healey SP, Patterson PL, Hancock S, Tang H, Bruening J, Hofton MA, Blair JB, Luthcke SB (2022) GEDI L4A Footprint Level Aboveground Biomass Density, Version 2.1. ORNL DAAC, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA. https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/2056

  • Duncanson L, Kellner JR, Armston J, Dubayah R, Minor DM, Hancock S, Healey SP, Patterson PL, Saarela S, Marselis S et al (2022) Aboveground biomass density models for NASA’s Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) lidar mission. Remote Sens Environ 270:112845. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2021.112845

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • FAO (2018) The State of the World’s Forests 2018 - Forest Pathways to Sustainable Development. Rome. License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO. Accessed on August 15, 2019. Available at. http://www.fao.org/3/I9535EN/i9535en.pdf

  • Francini S, D’Amico G, Vangi E, Borghi C, Chirici G, Integrating (2022) GEDI and Landsat: Spaceborne Lidar and Four decades of Optical Imagery for the analysis of Forest Disturbances and Biomass Changes in Italy. Sensors 22:2015. https://doi.org/10.3390/s22052015

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gasparini P, Di Cosmo L, Floris A, Notarangelo G, Rizzo M (2016) Guida per i rilievi in campo. INFC2015 ? Terzo inventario forestale nazionale. Consiglio per la ricerca in agricoltura e l’analisi dell’economia agraria, Unità di Ricerca per il Monitoraggio e la Pianificazione Forestale (CREA-MPF); Corpo Forestale dello Stato, Ministero per le Politiche Agricole, Alimentari e Forestali. 341 pp.

  • Hansen MC, Potapov PV, Moore R, Hancher M, Turubanova SA et al (2013) High-resolution global maps of 21st-century forest cover change. Science 342:850–853. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1244693

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Potapov P, Li X, Hernandez-Serna A, Tyukavina A, Hansen MC, Kommareddy A et al (2021) Mapping global forest canopy height through integration of GEDI and Landsat data. Remote Sens Environ 253:112165. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2020.112165

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • R Core Team (2017) R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation 499 for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL https://www.R-project.org/

  • Silva CA, Hamamura C, Valbuena R, Hancock S, Cardil A, Broadbent EN, Almeida DRA, Silva Junior CHL, Klauberg C rGEDI: NASA’s Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) Data Visualization and Processing. version 0.1.9, accessed on 22 Oct 2020, available at: https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=rGEDI

  • Silva CA, Duncanson L, Hancock S, Neuenschwander A, Thomas N, Hofton M, Fatoyinbo L, Simard M, Marshak CZ, Armston J, Lutchke S, Dubayah R (2021) Fusing simulated GEDI, ICESat-2 and NISAR data for regional aboveground biomass mapping. Remote Sens Environ 253:112234. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2020.112234

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vangi E, D’Amico G, Francini S, Giannetti F, Lasserre B, Marchetti M, McRoberts RE, Chirici G (201) The effect of forest mask quality in the wall-to-wall estimation of growing stock volume. Remote Sens 13(5):1038. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13051038

Download references

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the following projects: PRIN MULTIFOR, SUPERB, EFINET, and FORWARDS.

Funding

Open access funding provided by Università degli Studi di Firenze within the CRUI-CARE Agreement.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Agrarie, Alimentari, Ambientali e Forestali, , Università degli Studi di Firenze, Florence, Italy

    Elia Vangi, Giovanni D’Amico, Saverio Francini & Gherardo Chirici

  2. Dipartimento di Bioscienze e Territorio, Università degli Studi del Molise, Campobasso, Italy

    Elia Vangi

  3. CREA Research Centre for Forestry and Wood, Arezzo, Italy

    Giovanni D’Amico

  4. Fondazione per il Futuro delle Città, Firenze, Italy

    Saverio Francini & Gherardo Chirici

  5. Forest Modelling Laboratory, Institute for Agriculture and Forestry Systems in Mediterranean, National Research Council of Italy (CNR-ISAFOM), Perugia, Italy

    Elia Vangi

Authors
  1. Elia Vangi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  2. Giovanni D’Amico
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  3. Saverio Francini
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  4. Gherardo Chirici
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

All authors have contributed to the package development and drafting of the manuscript. E.V and S.F. coded the package. All the authors assisted with coding the functions and contributed to the interpretation, quality control, and revisions of the package and manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Saverio Francini.

Ethics declarations

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have influenced the work reported in this paper. The GEDI team has not developed the GEDI4R package. It comes with no guarantee, expressed or implied, and the authors hold no responsibility for the use or reliability of its outputs.

Additional information

Communicated by H. Babaie

Publisher’s note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Vangi, E., D’Amico, G., Francini, S. et al. GEDI4R: an R package for NASA’s GEDI level 4 A data downloading, processing and visualization. Earth Sci Inform 16, 1109–1117 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12145-022-00915-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12145-022-00915-3

Keywords