WP 2.1: Terrestrial laser scanning and biomass assessment

Nowadays terrestrial laserscanners are used for the survey of objects in various fields. Also in forestry have been many studies about automatic determination of tree structures (DBH, height, stem base) on the basis of three-dimensional laserscan data.

This approach offers two key benefits: on the one hand it is objective and on the other hand the assessment is non-destructive for the tree. But until now the exact volume measurement of an entire tree remains to be a great challenge. Due to the quite chaotic structure of a tree such as twisted branches, branches in different diameter classes or occlusion of branches, there are miscellaneous problems while modeling the data as measurable geometrical structures.

The goal of this working package is to resolve these and other problems for a preferably exact and non-destructive estimation of woody biomass in combination with wood density measurements (WP 2.4). Besides volume, other interesting tree parameters like angles between branches and branch-diameters will be estimated. To realize these aims, the developed algorithms will be implemented in preferably fully automatic software.

The main objectives of this working package will be:

• Accurate, efficient and objective inventory of biomass
• Elaboration of new methods to describe and quantify 3D forest structures