Modeling laser altimeter return waveforms over complex vegetation using high-resolution elevation data

The upcoming generation of laser altimeters record the interaction of emitt ed laser radiation with terrestrial surfaces in the form of a digitized wav eform. We model these laser altimeter return waveforms as the sum of the re flections from individual surfaces within laser footprints, accounting for instrument-specific properties. We compare over 1000 modeled and recorded w aveform pairs using the Pearson correlation. We show that we reliably synth esize the vertical structure information for vegetation canopies contained in a medium-large diameter laser footprint from a high-resolution elevation data set.