Estimation of floor light conditions of a coastal pine forest using small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Abstract

In a coastal pine forest in Tokushima prefecture, we created a canopy height model from Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) data using Structure from Motion (SfM), and estimated an index representing forest floor light condition for sustainable pine forest management. The canopy openness was estimated with high accuracies. Large size gaps were extracted in the most plots which have canopy openness larger than 30 %, and it implied that it is possible to extract areas having light conditions suitable for the growth of pine trees.