Abstract
Recent advances in laser technology enable us to capture detailed forest structures quickly and accurately. In the past, airborne laser has been used intensively to measure stand level attributes, such as average tree height, individual tree crowns, canopy cover, canopy stratification, and tree height growth. Using terrestrial lasers we can obtain more accurate stem volume and stem density by identifying the stem structure. Moreover, with the terrestrial laser, we can measure the upper part of stem and crown without human error, which was impossible using conventional ground-based manual measurement. LiDAR has contributed to various fields of forest ecosystem studies in estimating forest light and hydrological environments, predicting stand dynamics, and quantifying parameters for forest conservation. We expect that terrestrial lasers will be used more widely in forest ecological research to quantify physiological function of trees, large-scale, long-term monitoring of forest dynamics, as well as environmental assessment. This fine scale measurement technology has the potential to capture various structural attributes of forest ecosystems, which would allow us to understand and measure ecological processes quantitatively in forest ecosystems.
