Influence of Variable Selection and Forest Type on Forest Aboveground Biomass Estimation Using Machine Learning Algorithms

Forest biomass is a major store of carbon and plays a crucial role in the regional and global carbon cycle. Accurate forest biomass assessment is important for monitoring and mapping the status of and changes in forests. However, while remote sensing-based forest biomass estimation in general is well developed and extensively used, improving the accuracy of biomass estimation remains challenging. In this paper, we used China’s National Forest Continuous Inventory data and Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager data in combination with three algorithms, either the linear regression (LR), random forest (RF), or extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), to establish biomass estimation models based on forest type. In the modeling process, two methods of variable selection, e.g., stepwise regression and variable importance-base method, were used to select optimal variable subsets for LR and machine learning algorithms (e.g., RF and XGBoost), respectively. Comfortingly, the accuracy of models was significantly improved, and thus the following conclusions were drawn: (1) Variable selection is very important for improving the performance of models, especially for machine learning algorithms, and the influence of variable selection on XGBoost is significantly greater than that of RF. (2) Machine learning algorithms have advantages in aboveground biomass (AGB) estimation, and the XGBoost and RF models significantly improved the estimation accuracy compared with the LR models. Despite that the problems of overestimation and underestimation were not fully eliminated, the XGBoost algorithm worked well and reduced these problems to a certain extent. (3) The approach of AGB modeling based on forest type is a very advantageous method for improving the performance at the lower and higher values of AGB. Some conclusions in this paper were probably different as the study area changed. The methods used in this paper provide an optional and useful approach for improving the accuracy of AGB estimation based on remote sensing data, and the estimation of AGB was a reference basis for monitoring the forest ecosystem of the study area.