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. Large tropical trees store significant amounts of carbon in woody componentsand their distribution plays an important role in forest carbon stocks anddynamics. Here, we explore the properties of a new lidar-derived index, thelarge tree canopy area (LCA) defined as the area occupied by canopy above areference height. We hypothesize that this simple measure of forest structurerepresenting the crown area of large canopy trees could consistently explainthe landscape variations in forest volume and aboveground biomass (AGB)across a range of climate and edaphic conditions. To test this hypothesis, weassembled a unique dataset of high-resolution airborne light detection andranging (lidar) and ground inventory data in nine undisturbed old-growthNeotropical forests, of which four had plots large enough (1 ha) tocalibrate our model. We found that the LCA for trees greater than 27 m( ∼  25–30 m) in height and at least 100 m 2 crown size in a unitarea (1 ha), explains more than 75 % of total forest volume variations,irrespective of the forest biogeographic conditions. When weighted by averagewood density of the stand, LCA can be used as an unbiased estimator of AGBacross sites ( R2 =  0.78, RMSE  =  46.02 Mg ha −1 , bias = − 0.63 Mg ha −1) . Unlike other lidar-derived metrics with complexnonlinear relations to biomass, the relationship between LCA and AGB islinear and remains unique across forest types. A comparison with treeinventories across the study sites indicates that LCA correlates best withthe crown area (or basal area) of trees with diameter greater than 50 cm.The spatial invariance of the LCA–AGB relationship across the Neotropicssuggests a remarkable regularity of forest structure across the landscape anda new technique for systematic monitoring of large trees for theircontribution to AGB and changes associated with selective logging, treemortality and other types of tropical forest disturbance and dynamics.

Canopy area of large trees explains aboveground biomass variations across neotropical forest landscapes