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

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.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Maintainer Earthdata Forum
Last Updated June 23, 2026, 01:44 (UTC)
Created April 1, 2025, 14:12 (UTC)
accessLevel public
bureauCode {026:00}
catalog_conformsTo https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
harvest_object_id d5347fe8-9038-4452-810f-3ba2a9348cfd
harvest_source_id b99e41c6-fe79-4c19-bbc3-9b6c8111bfac
harvest_source_title Science Discovery Engine
identifier 10.3334/ORNLDAAC/1591
license https://www.usa.gov/government-works
modified 2026-06-15T22:16:01Z
programCode {026:000}
publisher ORNL_DAAC
resource-type Dataset
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source_hash e24f67b3210f7ebfa6c8513ca94dded6b59709e6338c8ddc7c5ddc138ed17a58
source_schema_version 1.1
spatial ["CARTESIAN", [{"WestBoundingCoordinate": 8.7276, "NorthBoundingCoordinate": 0.701451, "EastBoundingCoordinate": 12.0133, "SouthBoundingCoordinate": -2.29171}]]
temporal 2016-02-20/2016-03-08
theme {"Earth Science"}