Canopy cover estimation of agroforestry based on airborne LiDAR and Landsat 8 OLI

Agroforestry is a land-use system representing a variety of vegetation structures. Canopy cover is one of the most important variables in ecology, hydrology, forest management, and also canopy cover is useful for a basis for the definition of forest. Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) is a tool that can measure canopy cover, because it has the ability to penetrate the structured canopy. The disadvantage of LiDAR that it has limited spatial coverage and expensive to obtain data. Integration LiDAR to Landsat 8 data has the potential to overcome this limitation because Landsat 8 can provide greater spatial coverage to generate canopy cover of agroforestry estimation in Cidanau watershed, Banten Indonesia. The analysis showed that red band Landsat 8 using an exponential equation was the best to estimate canopy cover in agroforestry land use. The limitations of Landsat 8 OLI for the mapping of the canopy cover, on the high value of shrubs or grassland and high canopy cover, do not always represent actual canopy cover.