An automatic method to estimate forest coverage and strata from terrestrial laser data

Abstract

Forest cover and strata are important indicators in biodiversity and forest management. However, the ground assessment to obtain these indicators is limited by ocular estimation, which can be subjective. We introduced 3D data from terrestrial laser scanner to quantify forest structure. The 3D data is converted to voxels and different size of voxels is used for this study. The 0.125m of voxel size was the most accu rate within 10 m radius to estimate forest cover. With this resolution, an automatic method to identify forest strata was established from the vertical distribution of the voxels for temperate forest.