Terrestrial laser scanning in forest inventories

Xinlian Liang, Ville Kankare, Juha Hyyppä, Yunsheng Wang*, Antero Kukko, Henrik Haggren, Xiaowei Yu, Harri Kaartinen, Anttoni Jaakkola, Fengying Guan, Markus Holopainen, Mikko Vastaranta

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

653 Citations (Scopus)
777 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Decision making on forest resources relies on the precise information that is collected using inventory. There are many different kinds of forest inventory techniques that can be applied depending on the goal, scale, resources and the required accuracy. Most of the forest inventories are based on field sample. Therefore, the accuracy of the forest inventories depends on the quality and quantity of the field sample. Conventionally, field sample has been measured using simple tools. When map is required, remote sensing materials are needed. Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) provides a measurement technique that can acquire millimeter-level of detail from the surrounding area, which allows rapid, automatic and periodical estimates of many important forest inventory attributes. It is expected that TLS will be operationally used in forest inventories as soon as the appropriate software becomes available, best practices become known and general knowledge of these findings becomes more wide spread. Meanwhile, mobile laser scanning, personal laser scanning, and image-based point clouds became capable of capturing similar terrestrial point cloud data as TLS. This paper reviews the advances of applying TLS in forest inventories, discusses its properties with reference to other related techniques and discusses the future prospects of this technique. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Inc. (ISPRS). This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licensesiby-nc-nd/11.0/).

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)63-77
Number of pages15
JournalISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing
Volume115
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - May 2016
MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

Keywords

  • Forest inventory
  • Point cloud
  • Terrestrial laser scanning
  • Mobile laser scanning
  • Personal laser scanning
  • Image-based point cloud
  • GROUND-BASED LIDAR
  • CANOPY GAP FRACTION
  • POINT CLOUD DATA
  • LEAF-AREA INDEX
  • STANDING TREES
  • BIOMASS ESTIMATION
  • NORWAY SPRUCE
  • INDIVIDUAL TREES
  • INCIDENCE ANGLE
  • STEM

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