The effectiveness of lidar remote sensing for monitoring forest cover attributes and landscape restoration

•Implications and promise of effective usefulness of Lidar metrics for monitoring forest landscape restoration.•Canopy structural attributes were useful to characterize and distinguish different forest types.•Canopy structure showed relation with the tree community Shannon Index but not with richness.•A novel Lidar metric (LAHV) showed promising results for qualifying tree cover and assess its functions.•We expect our results can help address realistic restoration goals and actions under a global change context.