Multi-dimensional canopy structure enables cross-site scalability: a model development workflow for aboveground biomass estimation from terrestrial LiDAR

Forest above-ground biomass (AGB) is a crucial measure of forest carbon storage and plays a critical role in global carbon monitoring. While terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) serves as a powerful tool for AGB estimation, existing methods face key limitations. These include reliance on computationally intensive individual-tree segmentation, which struggles in dense forests with overlapping canopies, or on oversimplified structural attributes, such as diameter at breast height (DBH) and tree height, or being site-specific. Here, we present a cross-site scalable and computationally efficient modeling workflow for community-level AGB estimation using multiplatform TLS-derived metrics, without requiring tree-level point cloud segmentation. Besides community-level DBH extracted via a point-cloud-segmentation-free workflow, we selected community-level canopy structure metrics, such as leaf area …