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Table 2 Description of explanatory variables used to estimate above ground biomass

From: Improving aboveground biomass maps of tropical dry forests by integrating LiDAR, ALOS PALSAR, climate and field data

Type of variable

Variable

Description

LiDAR

Height metrics

These metrics includes mean, median, mode, maximum and minimum of canopy height, the variations of canopy height (variance, coefficient of variation) as well as percentiles 1, 5, 10…100 and L-moments. See [49] for description and formulas.

Point density metrics

Metrics used to evaluate canopy coverage. See [49] for description and formulas.

ALOS PALSAR

HH

Radar backscatter HH polarization

HV

Radar backscatter HV polarization

NDBI

The normalized difference backscatter index between the HH and HV bands. [32].

Texture of HH, HV and NDBI

The second-order texture measures used in this study are homogeneity (hom), contrast (cont), dissimilarity (dis), entropy (ent), angular second moment (asm), mean (mean), variance (var), and correlation (cor). See Haralick et al. [50] for details and formulas.

Climate

CWD

The Climatic Water Deficit (CWD), calculated as the difference between rainfall and evapotranspiration in the dry months [51].