Estimating Forest Aboveground Biomass Using a Combination of Geographical Random Forest and Empirical Bayesian Kriging Models

Abstract

Accurately estimating forest aboveground biomass (AGB) is imperative for comprehending carbon cycling, calculating carbon budgets, and formulating sustainable forest management plans. Currently, random forest (RF) and other machine learning models are widely used to estimate forest AGB, as they can effectively handle nonlinear relationships. However, by constructing a global model using all the samples collected from a study area, these models fail to account for the spatial heterogeneity in the AGB and cannot correct the prediction biases, thereby constraining the estimation accuracy. To overcome these limitations, we proposed a novel approach termed geographical random forest and empirical Bayesian kriging (GRFEBK). This hybrid model combines the localized modeling capability of geographical random forest (GRF) with the bias correction strength of empirical Bayesian kriging (EBK). GRF adapts RF to account for the spatial heterogeneity of the AGB, while EBK utilizes the spatial autocorrelation of residuals to correct the prediction deviations. This study was conducted in Hainan Island, utilizing spectral bands, vegetation indices, tasseled cap components derived from Landsat-8 imagery, backscattering coefficients from ALOS-2 synthetic aperture radar, topographic features, and the forest canopy height as the explanatory variables. A total of 195 forest aboveground biomass (AGB) samples were collected for modeling and assessing the predictive accuracy. The results demonstrate that, among the tested models, including GRFEBK, RF, support vector machine (SVM), k-nearest neighbor (KNN), geographically weighted regression (GWR), GRF, and EBK, GRFEBK attains the highest R2 (0.78) and the lowest RMSE (36.04 Mg/ha) and RRMSE (22.87%), significantly outperforming the conventional models and using GRF or EBK alone. These results demonstrate that by accounting for local non-stationarity in AGB and correcting prediction biases, GRFEBK achieves significantly higher accuracy than conventional RF and other models. While the results are promising, the computational cost of GRFEBK and its performance under varying geographical conditions warrant further investigation at larger scales to assess its broader applicability. Nevertheless, GRFEBK provides an innovative and more reliable approach for accurate forest AGB estimation with great potential to support global forest resource monitoring.