Evaluating GEDI data fusions for continuous characterizations of forest wildlife habitat

Continuous characterizations of forest structure are critical for modeling wildlife habitat as well as for assessing trade-offs with additional ecosystem services. To overcome the spatial and temporal limitations of airborne lidar data for studying wide-ranging animals and for monitoring wildlife habitat through time, novel sampling data sources, including the space-borne Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) lidar instrument, may be incorporated within data fusion frameworks to scale up satellite-based estimates of forest structure across continuous spatial extents. The objectives of this study were to: 1) investigate the value and limitations of satellite data sources for generating GEDI-fusion models and 30 m resolution predictive maps of eight forest structure measures across six western U.S. states (Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and Montana); 2) evaluate the suitability of GEDI as a reference data source and assess any spatiotemporal biases of GEDI-fusion maps using samples of airborne lidar data; and 3) examine differences in GEDI-fusion products for inclusion within wildlife habitat models for three keystone woodpecker species with varying forest structure needs. We focused on two fusion models, one that combined Landsat, Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar, disturbance, topographic, and bioclimatic predictor information (combined model), and one that was restricted to Landsat, topographic, and bioclimatic predictors (Landsat/topo/bio model). Model performance varied across the eight GEDI structure measures although all representing moderate to high predictive performance (model testing R2 values ranging from 0.36 to 0.76). Results were similar between fusion models, as well as for map validations for years of model creation (2019-2020) and hindcasted years (2016-2018). Within our wildlife case studies, modeling encounter rates of the three woodpecker species using GEDI-fusion inputs yielded AUC values ranging from 0.76-0.87 with observed relationships that followed our ecological understanding of the species. While our results show promise for the use of remote sensing data fusions for scaling up GEDI structure metrics of value for habitat modeling and other applications across broad continuous extents, further assessments are needed to test their performance within habitat modeling for additional species of conservation interest as well as biodiversity assessments.