Assessment of Three High-Resolution Forest Canopy Height Products in China

Large-scale mapping of forest canopy height (FCH) is crucial for accurately understanding ecosystem succession and forest carbon sinks. Recently, three high-resolution FCH products have been released, including global forest canopy height (GFCH), NNGI_FCH_China (NNGI_FCH), and ETH_GlobalCanopyHeight (ETH_GCH). This study provides a detailed assessment of these FCH products across China from forest area, spatial consistency, and overall accuracy using forest inventory, CLCD and field measurement data. The results showed that NNGI_FCH had the smallest relative error of 13.9% and achieved better estimates of forest area in all regions but the north and northeast regions. GFCH had the highest spatial consistency of 71.2% nationwide, followed by NNGI_FCH (69.7%), which performed slightly better than GFCH in the east and northwest regions. ETH_GCH exhibited the lowest spatial consistency of 35.6% and remained below 50% across all regions except the northeast and south regions. ETH_GCH demonstrated the highest overall accuracy across the country, with R2 and RMSE of 0.56 and 4.40 m, followed by NNGI_FCH (R2=0.48, RMSE=4.14 m) and GFCH (R2=0.48, RMSE=4.15 m). Validation results of ETH_GCH were relatively stable in different regions of China, while those of NNGI_FCH varied more but still outperformed GFCH. This study offers valuable insights by evaluating large-scale FCH products, which will be a key basis for in-depth studies on the utilization and improvement of future FCH mapping.