High-Resolution Above-Ground Biomass Mapping of the Alps using Satellite Embeddings and GEDI

Abstract. Accurate estimates of aboveground biomass (AGB) are crucial for understanding terrestrial carbon cycling and informing climate-efficient forest management policies. The diverse topography and altitudinal ranges make the Alps a significant contributor to European carbon stocks. However, existing AGB products often lack sufficient spatial resolution and temporal consistency to capture fine-scale biomass patterns in complex terrain. Here, we present a high resolution (30 m) gridded dataset of AGB (Mg haˉ¹) for the year 2022 over the Alpine Convention extent. The map was developed by integrating openly accessible GEDI-derived AGB metrics and the Earth Alpha Foundation Satellite Embedding using a random forest regression framework. The model’s performance was first evaluated using internal validation against GEDI-derived AGB, showing a high degree of agreement. Independent validation against 2068 National Forest Inventory (NFI) plots confirms the model’s ability to generalize across forest types and environmental conditions. Additionally, the dataset's suitability was evaluated by comparing it with existing high-resolution (<= 100 m) AGB estimates, highlighting improved estimates in heterogeneous mountainous terrain. The outputs were further used to discuss the spatial distribution of AGB across the region, highlighting the roles of climatic patterns, elevation, and forest composition in shaping AGB distributions. The dataset provides a high-resolution, spatially explicit representation of AGB across the Alpine region and is a valuable resource for regional carbon accounting, forest management, and environmental modeling. The dataset is available at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23073080 (Candotti and Tomelleri, 2026).