Wildlife Applications of GEDI, Spaceborne LiDAR

The NASA Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) is a spaceborne light detection and ranging system (LiDAR) focused on characterizing the three-dimensional structure of Earth’s temperate and tropical forests. A primary objective of GEDI is to assess the linkages between forest structure, habitat quality, and biodiversity at large spatial scales. Here, we introduce a project that used data fusion frameworks to create continuous GEDI-fusion forest structure metrics at 30 m across a large swath of the western United States. We leveraged these products in three separate studies to examine GEDI’s ability to assess habitat quality, biodiversity patterns, and species interactions. The first study used capture-mark-recapture data of two small mammal species to estimate parameters critical to habitat quality, density and survival. We found strong support that densities were associated with GEDI-fusion forest structures but weak support that survival was associated with GEDI-fusion metrics. We then used these findings to create spatially explicit density maps to aid management and conservation policies. The second study evaluated how GEDI-fusion metrics influence bat occupancy and diversity across broad environmental gradients and identified whether species–habitat relationships were stationary or nonstationary (i.e., fixed vs vary spatially). Using data from the North American Bat Monitoring Program and multispecies occupancy models we found GEDI-derived forest structures were influential, but nonstationary, drivers of individual species occupancy processes that scaleup to shape bat diversity patterns across the region. We demonstrate that incorporating GEDI and flexible spatial models can better support biodiversity assessments across broad, ecologically heterogeneous landscapes. The final study used GEDI-fusion products to predict the occupancy and species interactions of a carnivore guild through Bayesian occupancy models and structural equation modeling. GEDI-fusion forest structures were critical drivers of occupancy and mediated interactions between competitors and predators of two protected species. Collectively, this project represents novel applications of GEDI data and we conclude that forest structure characterized via GEDI data fusions can be used to assess demography, diversity, and interactions of terrestrial mammals.