Dr Grigorijs Goldbergs’ project developed a new approach for measuring biomass/carbon stocks in savanna vegetation, offering insight into the factors causing the poor dense image matching by high-resolution stereo satellites. Utilising a two-phase Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) analysis procedure integrating both individual tree detection and area-based approaches, Grigorijs has been able to better understand how the uncertainty of biomass estimation varies with scale.
Although airborne LiDAR provided higher tree detection rates and accurate estimates of tree above ground biomass, Grigorijs found that a 3D point cloud obtained from light weight optical unmanned aerial systems imagery is an adequate low-cost alternative for the detection of dominant and co-dominant tree stands, at least at a local scale in Australian tropical savanna. The methodologies developed can be applied to large areas of savanna country across northern Australia.
Grigorijs is now a lecturer at Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies and a Remote Sensing Data Engineer at the Institute of Electronics and Computer Science in Latvia.