Forest Canopy Height in Mexican Ecosystems

This dataset provides valuable insights into vegetation structure within Mexican ecosystems by leveraging data fusion techniques. It combines high-resolution airborne light detection and ranging (lidar) data with medium-resolution Landsat satellite imagery to overcome the spatial limitations of lidar data alone. This approach is crucial for applications such as estimating carbon stocks, canopy closure, and tree height, playing a significant role in ecological restoration monitoring.

The dataset comprises 1,105 aerial images captured over Mexico as part of the NASA G-LiHT program. Accompanying these images are lidar-derived canopy height values and Landsat-derived vegetation indices for 499,925 sample points within those images. The annotations, provided in a CSV file, include detailed metrics such as EVI, NDVI, NDWI, NBR, and precise canopy height measurements in meters, alongside ecoregion and vegetation type labels.

Users can access the G-LiHT images in GeoTIFF format, while the annotations are provided in a comprehensive CSV file. An associated open-source repository offers tools to replicate the sampling methodology, promoting transparency and reproducibility. The data is released under NASA’s Data and Information Policy, encouraging its use in publications and reports with the provided citation.