TY - JOUR A1 - Cunliffe, Andrew M. A1 - Anderson, Karen A1 - Boschetti, Fabio A1 - Brazier, Richard E. A1 - Graham, Hugh A. A1 - Myers-Smith, Isla H. A1 - Astor, Thomas A1 - Boer, Matthias M. A1 - Calvo, Leonor G. A1 - Clark, Patrick E. A1 - Cramer, Michael D. A1 - Encinas-Lara, Miguel S. A1 - Escarzaga, Stephen M. A1 - Fernández-Guisuraga, José M. A1 - Fisher, Adrian G. A1 - Gdulová, Kateřina A1 - Gillespie, Breahna M. A1 - Griebel, Anne A1 - Hanan, Niall P. A1 - Hanggito, Muhammad S. A1 - Haselberger, Stefan A1 - Havrilla, Caroline A. A1 - Heilman, Phil A1 - Ji, Wenjie A1 - Karl, Jason W. A1 - Kirchhoff, Mario A1 - Kraushaar, Sabine A1 - Lyons, Mitchell B. A1 - Marzolff, Irene A1 - Mauritz, Marguerite E. A1 - McIntire, Cameron D. A1 - Metzen, Daniel A1 - Méndez-Barroso, Luis A. A1 - Power, Simon C. A1 - Prošek, Jiří A1 - Sanz-Ablanedo, Enoc A1 - Sauer, Katherine J. A1 - Schulze-Brüninghoff, Damian A1 - Šímová, Petra A1 - Sitch, Stephen A1 - Smit, Julian L. A1 - Steele, Caiti M. A1 - Suárez-Seoane, Susana A1 - Vargas, Sergio A. A1 - Villarreal, Miguel A1 - Visser, Fleur A1 - Wachendorf, Michael A1 - Wirnsberger, Hannes A1 - Wojcikiewicz, Robert T1 - Global application of an unoccupied aerial vehicle photogrammetry protocol for predicting aboveground biomass in non-forest ecosystems T2 - Remote sensing in ecology and conservation N2 - Non-forest ecosystems, dominated by shrubs, grasses and herbaceous plants, provide ecosystem services including carbon sequestration and forage for grazing, and are highly sensitive to climatic changes. Yet these ecosystems are poorly represented in remotely sensed biomass products and are undersampled by in situ monitoring. Current global change threats emphasize the need for new tools to capture biomass change in non-forest ecosystems at appropriate scales. Here we developed and deployed a new protocol for photogrammetric height using unoccupied aerial vehicle (UAV) images to test its capability for delivering standardized measurements of biomass across a globally distributed field experiment. We assessed whether canopy height inferred from UAV photogrammetry allows the prediction of aboveground biomass (AGB) across low-stature plant species by conducting 38 photogrammetric surveys over 741 harvested plots to sample 50 species. We found mean canopy height was strongly predictive of AGB across species, with a median adjusted R2 of 0.87 (ranging from 0.46 to 0.99) and median prediction error from leave-one-out cross-validation of 3.9%. Biomass per-unit-of-height was similar within but different among, plant functional types. We found that photogrammetric reconstructions of canopy height were sensitive to wind speed but not sun elevation during surveys. We demonstrated that our photogrammetric approach produced generalizable measurements across growth forms and environmental settings and yielded accuracies as good as those obtained from in situ approaches. We demonstrate that using a standardized approach for UAV photogrammetry can deliver accurate AGB estimates across a wide range of dynamic and heterogeneous ecosystems. Many academic and land management institutions have the technical capacity to deploy these approaches over extents of 1–10 ha−1. Photogrammetric approaches could provide much-needed information required to calibrate and validate the vegetation models and satellite-derived biomass products that are essential to understand vulnerable and understudied non-forested ecosystems around the globe. KW - Canopy height model KW - drone KW - fine spatial resolution remote sensing KW - plant height KW - structure-from-motion photogrammetry KW - UAV Y1 - 2021 UR - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/63976 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-639761 SN - 2056-3485 N1 - We acknowledge funding support from NERC (NE/R00062X/1) awarded to R.E.B., A.M.C., K.A., S.S., NERC (NE/M016323/1) awarded to I.H.M.-S., NERC GEF (NERC/GEF:1063 and 1069) to I.H.M.-S. and A.M.C., U.S. Geological Survey Land Change Science Program awarded to M.L.V., NSF Graduate Research Internship Program (GRIP) awarded to C.A.H., USDA McIntire-Stennis project awarded to J.W.K., University of Cape Town award to S.C.P., J.S. and M.D.C., USDA Agricultural Research Service, GESFIRE (AGL2013-48189-C2-1-R), FIRESEVES (AGL2017-86075-C2-1-R), FIRECYL (LE033U14) and SEFIRECYL (LE001P17) awarded to J.M.F.-G., L.C. and S.S.-S. FPU16/03070 awarded to J.M.F.-G., NSF (#1836861), NASA ABoVE award number: NNX17AC58A, EU Horizon 2020 grant No. 776681 (PHUSICOS), Czech University of Life Sciences to J.P., Jornada Basin LTER (NSF Award #2025166) to N.P.H., NASA ICESat2 (Award 80NSSC20K0976) to N.P.H. and W.J., Australian Research Council (LP180100741) to M.L., National Council For Science And Technology to L.A.M.-B., Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG (MA 2549/6-1 and RI 835/24-1) to I.M. and M.K. and the NSW Department of Industry (NCRIS co-funding of Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network – Cumberland Plain Supersite) to M.M.B and A.G.. N1 - The data collected for this publication, including aerial images, marker and plot coordinates and dry sample weights, as well as site and survey metadata, are available from the NERC Environmental Information Data Centre . Code for photogrammetric processing and statistical analysis is available at Zenodo VL - 8 IS - 1 SP - 57 EP - 71 PB - Wiley CY - Chichester ER -