Sampling forests with terrestrial laser scanning
| Autor: | Peter Boucher, Ilan Valencius, Crystal B. Schaaf, David A. Orwig, Ian Paynter |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: |
sampling
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences Light timber cruise 0211 other engineering and technologies Sample (statistics) Terrestrial LiDAR scanning 02 engineering and technology Plant Science Biology Forests 01 natural sciences AcademicSubjects/SCI01080 Trees TLS Range (statistics) Point (geometry) forest inventory Transect 021101 geological & geomatics engineering 0105 earth and related environmental sciences Remote sensing Line-of-sight Forest inventory AcademicSubjects/SCI01210 Lasers AcademicSubjects/SCI01130 forestry Sampling (statistics) forest survey Original Articles Data analysis |
| Zdroj: | Annals of Botany |
| ISSN: | 1095-8290 0305-7364 |
| Popis: | Background and Aims Terrestrial laser scanners (TLSs) have successfully captured various properties of individual trees and have potential to further increase the quality and efficiency of forest surveys. However, TLSs are limited to line of sight observations, and forests are complex structural environments that can occlude TLS beams and thereby cause incomplete TLS samples. We evaluate the prevalence and sources of occlusion that limit line of sight to forest stems for TLS scans, assess the impacts of TLS sample incompleteness, and evaluate sampling strategies and data analysis techniques aimed at improving sample quality and representativeness. Methods We use a large number of TLS scans (761), taken across a 255 650-m2 area of forest with detailed field survey data: the Harvard Forest Global Earth Observatory (ForestGEO) (MA, USA). Sets of TLS returns are matched to stem positions in the field surveys to derive TLS-observed stem sets, which are compared with two additional stem sets derived solely from the field survey data: a set of stems within a fixed range from the TLS and a set of stems based on 2-D modelling of line of sight. Stem counts and densities are compared between the stem sets, and four alternative derivations of area to correct stem densities for the effects of occlusion are evaluated. Representation of diameter at breast height and species, drawn from the field survey data, are also compared between the stem sets. Key Results Occlusion from non-stem sources was the major influence on TLS line of sight. Transect and point TLS samples demonstrated better representativeness of some stem properties than did plots. Deriving sampled area from TLS scans improved estimates of stem density. Conclusions TLS sampling efforts should consider alternative sampling strategies and move towards in-progress assessment of sample quality and dynamic adaptation of sampling. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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