Forest structural diversity at NEON sites in the continuous USA that experienced recent moderate disturbance

Disturbances can change the structural diversity of forests through time, which can be measured from three-dimensional data provided by LiDAR. Discrete-return LiDAR was used to measure a suite of 19 structural diversity metrics that describe the height, cover and openness, vegetation density, and internal and external heterogeneity of forest vegetation at NEON base plots. Discrete-return LiDAR point clouds from the NEON Aerial Observation Platform (DP1.30003.001) were downloaded September of 2020 and used to estimate the metrics within 40 x 40 m base plots. Metrics were estimated from base plots at 15 NEON forested sites from provisional LiDAR data available from 2014 to 2020. The workflow that produced the data was developed in the program R.