Forest in situ observations using unmanned aerial vehicle as an alternative of terrestrial measurements

编号 030021501

推送时间 20191202

研究领域 森林经理 

年份 2019 

类型 期刊 

语种 英语

标题 Forest in situ observations using unmanned aerial vehicle as an alternative of terrestrial measurements

来源期刊 FOREST ECOSYSTEMS

期 第215期

发表时间 20190415

关键词 In situ;  Point cloud;  Terrestrial;  Mobile;  Above canopy;  Unmanned aerial vehicle;  Forest inventory; 

摘要 Background: Lately, terrestrial point clouds have drawn attention as a new data source for in situ forest investigations. So far, terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) has the highest data quality among all terrestrial point cloud data in terms of geometric accuracy and level of detail (IEEE Transact Geosci Remote Sens 53: 5117-5132, 2015). The TLS point clouds processed by automated algorithms can provide certain individual tree parameters at close to required accuracy in practical applications. However, all terrestrial point clouds face a general challenge, which is the occlusions of upper tree crowns. An emerging technology called unmanned-aerial-vehicle (UAV) - borne laser scanning (ULS) potentially combines the strengths of above and under canopy surveys.
Results: The performance of ULS are evaluated in 22 sample plots of various forest stand conditions in a boreal forest. The forest parameter estimates are benchmarked through a comparison with state-of-the-art terrestrial mechanisms from both static terrestrial and mobile laser scanning. The results show that in easy forest stand conditions, the performance of ULS point cloud is comparable with the terrestrial solutions.
Conclusions: This study gives the first strict evaluation of ULS in situ observations in varied forest conditions. The study also acts as a benchmarking of available active remote sensing techniques for forest in situ mensuration. The results indicate that the current off-the-shelf ULS has an excellent tree height/tops measurement performance. Although the geometrical accuracy of the ULS data, especially at the stem parts, does not yet reach the level of other terrestrial point clouds, the unbeatable high mobility and fast data acquisition make the ULS a very attractive option in forest investigations.

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