CHMv2: Improvements in Global Canopy Height Mapping using DINOv3

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2603.06382v1
• Date: Fri, 06 Mar 2026 15:33:31 GMT
• Title: CHMv2: Improvements in Global Canopy Height Mapping using DINOv3
• Abstract summary: CHMv2 is a meter-resolution canopy height map derived from high-resolution optical satellite imagery.<n>It substantially improves accuracy, reduces bias in tall forests, and better preserves fine-scale structure such as canopy edges and gaps.<n>We validate CHMv2 against independent ALS test sets and against tens of millions of GEDI and ICESat-2 observations.
• Score: 11.152778276469107
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Accurate canopy height information is essential for quantifying forest carbon, monitoring restoration and degradation, and assessing habitat structure, yet high-fidelity measurements from airborne laser scanning (ALS) remain unevenly available globally. Here we present CHMv2, a global, meter-resolution canopy height map derived from high-resolution optical satellite imagery using a depth-estimation model built on DINOv3 and trained against ALS canopy height models. Compared to existing products, CHMv2 substantially improves accuracy, reduces bias in tall forests, and better preserves fine-scale structure such as canopy edges and gaps. These gains are enabled by a large expansion of geographically diverse training data, automated data curation and registration, and a loss formulation and data sampling strategy tailored to canopy height distributions. We validate CHMv2 against independent ALS test sets and against tens of millions of GEDI and ICESat-2 observations, demonstrating consistent performance across major forest biomes.

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