scholarly journals Retrieval of Forest Structural Parameters From Terrestrial Laser Scanning: A Romanian Case Study

Forests ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 392
Author(s):  
Ionuț-Silviu Pascu ◽  
Alexandru-Claudiu Dobre ◽  
Ovidiu Badea ◽  
Mihai Andrei Tanase

Research Highlights: The present study case investigates the differences occurring when tree’s biophysical parameters are extracted through single and multiple scans. Scan sessions covered mountainous and hill regions of the Carpathian forests. Background and Objectives: We focused on analyzing stems, as a function of diameter at breast height (DBH) and the total height (H), at sample plot level for natural forests, with the purpose of assessing the potential for transitioning available methodology to field work in Romania. Materials and Methods: We performed single and multiple scans using a FARO Focus 3D X130 phase shift terrestrial laser scanner at 122kpts and 0.3:0.15 mm noise compression ratio, resulting in an average point density of 6pts at 10m. The point cloud we obtained underpinned the DBH and heights analysis. In order to reach values similar to those measured in the field, we used both the original and the segmented point clouds, postprocessed in subsamples of different radii. Results: Pearson’s correlation coefficient above 0.8 for diameters showed high correlation with the field measurements. Diameter averages displayed differences within tolerances (0.02m) for 10 out of 12 plots. Height analysis led to poorer results. For both acquisition methods, the values of the correlation coefficient peaked at 0.6. The initial hypothesis that trees positioned at a distance equivalent to their height can be measured more precise, was not valid; no increase in correlation strength was visible for either heights or diameters as the distance from scanner varied (r = 0.52). Conclusions: With regard to tree biophysical parameters extraction, the acquisition method has no major influence upon visible trees. We emphasize the term “visible”, as an increase in the number of acquisitions led to an increased number of detected trees (16% in old stands and 29% in young stands).

Author(s):  
A. M. G. Tommaselli ◽  
M. V. A. Moraes ◽  
L. S. L. Silva ◽  
M. F. Rubio ◽  
G. J. Carvalho ◽  
...  

Marginal erosions in reservoirs of hydroelectric plants have caused economic and environmental problems concerning hydroelectric power generation, reduction of productive areas and devaluing land parcels. The real extension and dynamics of these erosion processes are not well known for Brazilian reservoirs. To objectively assess these problems Unesp (Univ Estadual Paulista) and Duke Energy are developing a joint project which aims at the monitoring the progression of some erosive processes and understanding the causes and the dynamics of this phenomenon. Mobile LASER scanning was considered the most suitable alternative for the challenges established in the project requirements. A MDL DynaScan Mobile LASER M150 scanner was selected which uses RTK for real time positioning integrated to an IMU, enabling instantaneous generation of georeferenced point clouds. Two different reservoirs were choose for monitoring: Chavantes (storage plant) and Rosana (run-of-river plant), both in the Paranapanema River, border of São Paulo and Paraná States, Brazil. The monitoring areas are scanned quarterly and analysed with base on the point cloud, meshes, contours and cross sections. Cross sections are used to visualize and compute the rate and the dynamics of erosion. Some examples and quantitative results are presented along with an analysis of the proposed technique. Some recommendations to improve the field work and latter data processing are also introduced.


2013 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 355-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Trochta ◽  
Kamil Král ◽  
David Janík ◽  
Dušan Adam

With the development of terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and its applications in forestry, the question arises as to how the scanners should be ideally placed for the best possible data acquisition. We searched for an optimal scanning distance for recognition of stems in natural beech-dominated forests, focusing particularly on the shading effect of tree stems and terrain. Recognised tree stems in TLS point clouds were compared with reference stem maps. A GIS-based visibility simulation was carried out to enhance the quantitative assessment and generalizability of results. The analyses also include the additive effect of multiple scanning positions. Single scans only have a tree recognition rate above 80% up to a distance of 15 m from the scanner; using at least three scanning positions a comparable recognition rate was attained up to 20–25 m. A simulated coverage of a beech-dominated natural forest by laser beams using a 40 m square grid of scanning positions captured at least half of the stem perimeter for more than 90% of trees with a DBH ≥ 10 cm. In sites with rough terrain, the relief configuration has a more significant effect of occlusion than present tree stems.


Data ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 103
Author(s):  
Christoph Gollob ◽  
Tim Ritter ◽  
Arne Nothdurft

In forest inventory, trees are usually measured using handheld instruments; among the most relevant are calipers, inclinometers, ultrasonic devices, and laser range finders. Traditional forest inventory has been redesigned since modern laser scanner technology became available. Laser scanners generate massive data in the form of 3D point clouds. We have developed a novel methodology to provide estimates of the tree positions, stem diameters, and tree heights from these 3D point clouds. This dataset was made publicly accessible to test new software routines for the automatic measurement of forest trees using laser scanner data. Benchmark studies with performance tests of different algorithms are welcome. The dataset contains co-registered raw 3D point-cloud data collected on 20 forest inventory sample plots in Austria. The data were collected by two different laser scanning systems: (1) A mobile personal laser scanner (PLS) (ZEB Horizon, GeoSLAM Ltd., Nottingham, UK) and (2) a static terrestrial laser scanner (TLS) (Focus3D X330, Faro Technologies Inc., Lake Mary, FL, USA). The data also contain digital terrain models (DTMs), field measurements as reference data (ground-truth), and the output of recent software routines for the automatic tree detection and the automatic stem diameter measurement.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 261
Author(s):  
Francisco Mauro ◽  
Andrew T. Hudak ◽  
Patrick A. Fekety ◽  
Bryce Frank ◽  
Hailemariam Temesgen ◽  
...  

Airborne laser scanning (ALS) acquisitions provide piecemeal coverage across the western US, as collections are organized by local managers of individual project areas. In this study, we analyze different factors that can contribute to developing a regional strategy to use information from completed ALS data acquisitions and develop maps of multiple forest attributes in new ALS project areas in a rapid manner. This study is located in Oregon, USA, and analyzes six forest structural attributes for differences between: (1) synthetic (i.e., not-calibrated), and calibrated predictions, (2) parametric linear and semiparametric models, and (3) models developed with predictors computed for point clouds enclosed in the areas where field measurements were taken, i.e., “point-cloud predictors”, and models developed using predictors extracted from pre-rasterized layers, i.e., “rasterized predictors”. Forest structural attributes under consideration are aboveground biomass, downed woody biomass, canopy bulk density, canopy height, canopy base height, and canopy fuel load. Results from our study indicate that semiparametric models perform better than parametric models if no calibration is performed. However, the effect of the calibration is substantial in reducing the bias of parametric models but minimal for the semiparametric models and, once calibrations are performed, differences between parametric and semiparametric models become negligible for all responses. In addition, minimal differences between models using point-cloud predictors and models using rasterized predictors were found. We conclude that the approach that applies semiparametric models and rasterized predictors, which represents the easiest workflow and leads to the most rapid results, is justified with little loss in accuracy or precision even if no calibration is performed.


Sensors ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (10) ◽  
pp. 3347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhishuang Yang ◽  
Bo Tan ◽  
Huikun Pei ◽  
Wanshou Jiang

The classification of point clouds is a basic task in airborne laser scanning (ALS) point cloud processing. It is quite a challenge when facing complex observed scenes and irregular point distributions. In order to reduce the computational burden of the point-based classification method and improve the classification accuracy, we present a segmentation and multi-scale convolutional neural network-based classification method. Firstly, a three-step region-growing segmentation method was proposed to reduce both under-segmentation and over-segmentation. Then, a feature image generation method was used to transform the 3D neighborhood features of a point into a 2D image. Finally, feature images were treated as the input of a multi-scale convolutional neural network for training and testing tasks. In order to obtain performance comparisons with existing approaches, we evaluated our framework using the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Working Groups II/4 (ISPRS WG II/4) 3D labeling benchmark tests. The experiment result, which achieved 84.9% overall accuracy and 69.2% of average F1 scores, has a satisfactory performance over all participating approaches analyzed.


Author(s):  
M. Lo Brutto ◽  
E. Iuculano ◽  
P. Lo Giudice

Abstract. The preservation of historic buildings can often be particularly difficult due to the lack of detailed information about architectural features, construction details, etc.. However, in recent years considerable technological innovation in the field of Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) has been achieved by the Building Information Modeling (BIM) process. BIM was developed as a methodology used mainly for new construction but, given its considerable potential, this approach can also be successfully used for existing buildings, especially for buildings of historical and architectural value. In this case, it is more properly referred to as Historic – or Heritage – Building Information Modeling (HBIM). In the HBIM process, it is essential to precede the parametric modeling phase of the building with a detailed 3D survey that allows the acquisition of all geometric information. This methodology, called Scan-to-BIM, involves the use of 3D survey techniques for the production of point clouds as a geometric “database” for parametric modeling. The Scan-to-BIM approach can have several issues relating to the complexity of the survey. The work aims to apply the Scan-to-BIM approach to the survey and modeling of a historical and architectural valuable building to test a survey method, based on integrating different techniques (topography, photogrammetry and laser scanning), that improves the data acquisition phase. The “Real Cantina Borbonica” (Cellar of Royal House of Bourbon) in Partinico (Sicily, Italy) was chosen as a case study. The work has allowed achieving the HBIM of the “Real Cantina Borbonica” and testing an approach based exclusively on a topographic constraint to merge in the same reference system all the survey data (laser scanner and photogrammetric point clouds).


Author(s):  
H. Macher ◽  
M. Boudhaim ◽  
P. Grussenmeyer ◽  
M. Siroux ◽  
T. Landes

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> In the context of building renovation, infrared (IR) cameras are widely used to perform the energy audit of buildings. They allow analysing precisely the energetic performances of existing buildings and thermal analyses represent a key step for the reduction of energy consumption. They are also used to assess the thermal comfort of people living or working in a building. Building Information Models (BIM) are widespread to plan the rehabilitation of existing buildings and laser scanning is now commonly used to capture the geometry of buildings for as-built BIM creation. The combination of thermographic and geometric data presents a high number and variety of applications (Lagüela and Díaz-Vilariño, 2016). However, geometric and thermal information are generally acquired separately by different building stakeholders and thermal analyses are performed with independence of geometry. In this paper, the combination of thermal and geometric information is investigated for indoor of buildings. The aim of the project is to create 3D thermographic point clouds based on data acquired by a laser scanner and a thermal camera. Based on these point clouds, BIM models might be enriched with thermal information through the scan-to-BIM process.</p>


Author(s):  
Shenglian lu ◽  
Guo Li ◽  
Jian Wang

Tree skeleton could be useful to agronomy researchers because the skeleton describes the shape and topological structure of a tree. The phenomenon of organs’ mutual occlusion in fruit tree canopy is usually very serious, this should result in a large amount of data missing in directed laser scanning 3D point clouds from a fruit tree. However, traditional approaches can be ineffective and problematic in extracting the tree skeleton correctly when the tree point clouds contain occlusions and missing points. To overcome this limitation, we present a method for accurate and fast extracting the skeleton of fruit tree from laser scanner measured 3D point clouds. The proposed method selects the start point and endpoint of a branch from the point clouds by user’s manual interaction, then a backward searching is used to find a path from the 3D point cloud with a radius parameter as a restriction. The experimental results in several kinds of fruit trees demonstrate that our method can extract the skeleton of a leafy fruit tree with highly accuracy.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moritz Bruggisser ◽  
Johannes Otepka ◽  
Norbert Pfeifer ◽  
Markus Hollaus

&lt;p&gt;Unmanned aerial vehicles-borne laser scanning (ULS) allows time-efficient acquisition of high-resolution point clouds on regional extents at moderate costs. The quality of ULS-point clouds facilitates the 3D modelling of individual tree stems, what opens new possibilities in the context of forest monitoring and management. In our study, we developed and tested an algorithm which allows for i) the autonomous detection of potential stem locations within the point clouds, ii) the estimation of the diameter at breast height (DBH) and iii) the reconstruction of the tree stem. In our experiments on point clouds from both, a RIEGL miniVUX-1DL and a VUX-1UAV, respectively, we could detect 91.0 % and 77.6 % of the stems within our study area automatically. The DBH could be modelled with biases of 3.1 cm and 1.1 cm, respectively, from the two point cloud sets with respective detection rates of 80.6 % and 61.2 % of the trees present in the field inventory. The lowest 12 m of the tree stem could be reconstructed with absolute stem diameter differences below 5 cm and 2 cm, respectively, compared to stem diameters from a point cloud from terrestrial laser scanning. The accuracy of larger tree stems thereby was higher in general than the accuracy for smaller trees. Furthermore, we recognized a small influence only of the completeness with which a stem is covered with points, as long as half of the stem circumference was captured. Likewise, the absolute point count did not impact the accuracy, but, in contrast, was critical to the completeness with which a scene could be reconstructed. The precision of the laser scanner, on the other hand, was a key factor for the accuracy of the stem diameter estimation.&amp;#160;&lt;br&gt;The findings of this study are highly relevant for the flight planning and the sensor selection of future ULS acquisition missions in the context of forest inventories.&lt;/p&gt;


Author(s):  
D. Hoffmeister ◽  
S. Zellmann ◽  
K. Kindermann ◽  
A. Pastoors ◽  
U. Lang ◽  
...  

Terrestrial laser scanning was conducted to document and analyse sites of geoarchaeological interest in Jordan, Egypt and Spain. In those cases, the terrestrial laser scanner LMS-Z420i from Riegl was used in combination with an accurate RTK-GPS for georeferencing of the point clouds. Additionally, local surveying networks were integrated by established transformations and used for indirect registration purposes. All data were integrated in a workflow that involves different software and according results. The derived data were used for the documentation of the sites by accurate plans and cross-sections. Furthermore, the 3D data were analysed for geoarchaeological research problems, such as volumetric determinations, the ceiling thickness of a cave and lighting simulations based on path tracing. The method was reliable in harsh environmental conditions, but the weight of the instrument, the measuring time and the minimum measurement distance were a drawback. However, generally an accurate documentation of the sites was possible. Overall, the integration in a 3D GIS is easily possible by the accurate georeference of the derived data. In addition, local survey results are also implemented by the established transformations. Enhanced analyses based on the derived 3D data shows promising results.


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