Abstract
Since United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, the world community has formally recognized that forests have a crucial role to play mitigating global warming and it is necessary to evaluate their role through repeatable, verifiable, and transparent scientific data analyses. The Kyoto Protocol and a subsequent document, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report and Good Practice Guidance for Land Use, Land Use Changes and Forestry, recommended establishing a scientifically neutral method to evaluate and monitor forest land changes and forest biomass dynamics with international standards. Satellite remote sensing has been identified as one tool that can be used to measure forest area, rates of change in land use, location of forest activities, etc. Also satellite data has many advantages that are not only transparent and verifiable but also cost effective, including periodic data acquisition that is internationally available. When negotiators decided the modality of the forest inventory scheme of Kyoto Protocol, they relate it to the imaged characteristics of satellite remote sensing data. But the utility of data from satellites has some difficulties in estimating growing stock changes, and in distinguishing some type of forest activities, such as thinning. In this context LiDAR has a potentiality to provide measures for estimating carbon stock changes, greenhouse gas emissions, and removals associated with forest lands under UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol. The definition of forest under Kyoto Protocol requires the minimum threshold of forest area, tree crown density, and tree height to be determined within specific ranges. Satellite data have not work well to separate forests according to such a precise threshold. However, LiDAR will be able to provide enough information to judge whether stands will be able to satisfy the definition of a forest. This report discusses the advantages of LiDAR from the view point of the inventory scheme under Kyoto Protocol.
