LiDAR: principles and forestry applications

Abstract

One of the first areas investigated for commercial applications of LiDAR was for forest applications. Topography and forest coverage are of extreme importance for forest resources managers. Accurate information on trees height and density, besides being fundamental for planning, are hard to obtain by conventional methods. Laser scanning technology, as opposed to satellite images and aerial photographs, can concurrently map the ground and obtain estimates of trees height. The use of modeling associated with LiDAR data allows to obtain estimates of several other forest variables such as basal area, diameter, volume,  biomass and fuel material. Besides these applications, LiDAR technology presents a great potential for planning forest harvesting activities, road construction and maintenance. However, there are great challenges to be overcome in developing technologies and computational applications more robust and reliable for modeling data from this type of sensor.