Vegetation spatial structure including plant height

biomass

vertical and horizontal heterogeneity

is an important factor influencing the exchanges of matter and energy between the landscape and atmosphere

and the biodiversity of ecosystems.Most remote sensing systems

although providing images of the horizontal organization of canopies

do not provide direct information on the vertical distribution of canopy elements.The lidar waveform signature from a large-footprint lidar instrument

such as the Laser Vegetation Imaging Sensor（LVIS） has been successfully used to estimate the tree height and forest above-ground biomass.But the most lidar instruments do not have the mapping capability

and provide only sample data in a region.Other remote sensing data

such as a multi-angle spectral

a hyper-spectral

a temporal spectral radiometer

or radar data

will be needed to extrapolate the GLAS sample measurements into continuous regional coverage for forest structure parameters.The ability to image the surface through various angles by the Multi-angle Imaging Spectrometer（MISR） instrument provides canopy structure information through the anisotropy of the BRDF.Combining the vertical sampling of lidar with MISR’s mapping capability provides a possibility of mapping forest spatial parameters in regional

even global scales.The data from the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System（GLAS） on ICESat

and data from MISR on Terra are potential dataset for regional or global forest structure parameter mapping.The objectives of this study are to evaluate the GLAS data and to investigate the ability of MISR-like data for forest structural parameter estimation.The LVIS

AirMISR

and GLAS data were used in this study.The comparisons between GLAS tree height measurement and the average tree height from LVIS within the GLAS footprint show the high correlations.The study also shows the capability of multi-angle imaging spectrometer data to predict tree height information

which will be further explored for regional forest structural parameters mapping.