scholarly journals VOXEL BASED REPRESENTATION OF FULL-WAVEFORM AIRBORNE LASER SCANNER DATA FOR FORESTRY APPLICATIONS

Author(s):  
N. Stelling ◽  
K. Richter

The advantages of using airborne full-waveform laser scanner data in forest applications, e.g. for the description of the vertical vegetation structure or accurate biomass estimation, have been emphasized in many publications. To exploit the full potential offered by airborne full-waveform laser scanning data, the development of voxel based methods for data analysis is essential. In contrast to existing approaches based on the extraction of discrete 3D points by a Gaussian decomposition, it is very promising to derive the voxel attributes from the digitised waveform directly. For this purpose, the waveform data have to be transferred into a 3D voxel representation. This requires a series of radiometric and geometric transformations of the raw full-waveform laser scanner data. Thus, the paper deals with the geometric aspects and describes a processing chain from the raw waveform data to an attenuationcorrected volumetric forest stand reconstruction. <br><br> The integration of attenuation-corrected waveform data into the voxel space is realised with an efficient parametric voxel traversal method operating on an octree data structure. The voxel attributes are derived from the amplitudes of the attenuation-corrected waveforms. Additionally, a new 3D filtering approach is presented to eliminate non-object voxel. Applying these methods to real full-waveform laser scanning data, a voxel based representation of a spruce was generated combining three flight strips from different viewing directions.

Author(s):  
N. Stelling ◽  
K. Richter

The advantages of using airborne full-waveform laser scanner data in forest applications, e.g. for the description of the vertical vegetation structure or accurate biomass estimation, have been emphasized in many publications. To exploit the full potential offered by airborne full-waveform laser scanning data, the development of voxel based methods for data analysis is essential. In contrast to existing approaches based on the extraction of discrete 3D points by a Gaussian decomposition, it is very promising to derive the voxel attributes from the digitised waveform directly. For this purpose, the waveform data have to be transferred into a 3D voxel representation. This requires a series of radiometric and geometric transformations of the raw full-waveform laser scanner data. Thus, the paper deals with the geometric aspects and describes a processing chain from the raw waveform data to an attenuationcorrected volumetric forest stand reconstruction. <br><br> The integration of attenuation-corrected waveform data into the voxel space is realised with an efficient parametric voxel traversal method operating on an octree data structure. The voxel attributes are derived from the amplitudes of the attenuation-corrected waveforms. Additionally, a new 3D filtering approach is presented to eliminate non-object voxel. Applying these methods to real full-waveform laser scanning data, a voxel based representation of a spruce was generated combining three flight strips from different viewing directions.


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 20170049 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Mark Danson ◽  
Fadal Sasse ◽  
Lucy A. Schofield

The Salford Advanced Laser Canopy Analyser (SALCA) is an experimental terrestrial laser scanner designed and built specifically to measure the structural and biophysical properties of forest canopies. SALCA is a pulsed dual-wavelength instrument with co-aligned laser beams recording backscattered energy at 1063 and 1545 nm; it records full-waveform data by sampling the backscattered energy at 1 GHz giving a range resolution of 150 mm. The finest angular sampling resolution is 1 mrad and around 9 million waveforms are recorded over a hemisphere above the tripod-mounted scanner in around 110 min. Starting in 2010, data pre-processing and calibration approaches, data analysis and information extraction methods were developed and a wide range of field experiments conducted. The overall objective is to exploit the spatial, spectral and temporal characteristics of the data to produce ecologically useful information on forest and woodland canopies including leaf area index, plant area volume density and leaf biomass, and to explore the potential for tree species identification and classification. This paper outlines the key challenges in instrument development, highlights the potential applications for providing new data for forest ecology, and describes new avenues for exploring information-rich data from the next generation of terrestrial laser scanners instruments like SALCA.


2005 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 195-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Geist ◽  
Hallgeir Elvehøy ◽  
Miriam Jackson ◽  
Johann Stötter

AbstractKey issues of glacier monitoring are changes in glacier geometry and glacier mass. As accurate direct measurements are costly and time-consuming, the use of various remote-sensing data for glacier monitoring is explored. One technology used and described here is airborne laser scanning. The method enables the derivation of high-quality digital elevation models (DEMs) with a vertical and horizontal accuracy in the sub-metre range. Between September 2001 and August 2002, three laser scanner data acquisition flights were carried out, covering the whole area of Engabreen, Norway, and corresponding well to the measurement dates for the mass-balance year 2001/02. The data quality of the DEMs is assessed (e.g. by comparing the values with a control area which has been surveyed independently or GPS ground profiles measured during the flights). For the whole glacier, surface elevation change and consequently volume change is calculated, quantified and compared with traditional mass-balance data for the same time interval. For the winter term, emergence/submergence velocity is determined from laser scanner data and snow-depth data and is compared with velocity measurements at stakes. The investigations reveal the high potential of airborne laser scanning for measuring the extent and the topography of glaciers as well as changes in geometry (Δarea, Δvolume).


Author(s):  
G. Tran ◽  
D. Nguyen ◽  
M. Milenkovic ◽  
N. Pfeifer

Full-waveform (FWF) LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) systems have their advantage in recording the entire backscattered signal of each emitted laser pulse compared to conventional airborne discrete-return laser scanner systems. The FWF systems can provide point clouds which contain extra attributes like amplitude and echo width, etc. In this study, a FWF data collected in 2010 for Eisenstadt, a city in the eastern part of Austria was used to classify four main classes: buildings, trees, waterbody and ground by employing a decision tree. Point density, echo ratio, echo width, normalised digital surface model and point cloud roughness are the main inputs for classification. The accuracy of the final results, correctness and completeness measures, were assessed by comparison of the classified output to a knowledge-based labelling of the points. Completeness and correctness between 90% and 97% was reached, depending on the class. While such results and methods were presented before, we are investigating additionally the transferability of the classification method (features, thresholds …) to another urban FWF lidar point cloud. Our conclusions are that from the features used, only echo width requires new thresholds. A data-driven adaptation of thresholds is suggested.


Author(s):  
S. Bechtold ◽  
B. Höfle

In many technical domains of modern society, there is a growing demand for fast, precise and automatic acquisition of digital 3D models of a wide variety of physical objects and environments. Laser scanning is a popular and widely used technology to cover this demand, but it is also expensive and complex to use to its full potential. However, there might exist scenarios where the operation of a &lt;i&gt;real&lt;/i&gt; laser scanner could be replaced by a computer simulation, in order to save time and costs. This includes scenarios like teaching and training of laser scanning, development of new scanner hardware and scanning methods, or generation of artificial scan data sets to support the development of point cloud processing and analysis algorithms. To test the feasibility of this idea, we have developed a highly flexible laser scanning simulation framework named &lt;i&gt;Heidelberg LiDAR Operations Simulator (HELIOS)&lt;/i&gt;. HELIOS is implemented as a Java library and split up into a core component and multiple extension modules. Extensible Markup Language (XML) is used to define scanner, platform and scene models and to configure the behaviour of modules. Modules were developed and implemented for (1) loading of simulation assets and configuration (i.e. 3D scene models, scanner definitions, survey descriptions etc.), (2) playback of XML survey descriptions, (3) TLS survey planning (i.e. automatic computation of recommended scanning positions) and (4) interactive real-time 3D visualization of simulated surveys. As a proof of concept, we show the results of two experiments: First, a survey planning test in a scene that was specifically created to evaluate the quality of the survey planning algorithm. Second, a simulated TLS scan of a crop field in a precision farming scenario. The results show that HELIOS fulfills its design goals.


Author(s):  
C. Hütt ◽  
H. Schiedung ◽  
N. Tilly ◽  
G. Bareth

In this study, images from the satellite system WorldView-2 in combination with terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) over a maize field in Germany are investigated. Simultaneously to the measurements a biomass field campaigns was carried out. From the point clouds of the terrestrial laser scanning campaigns crop surface models (CSM) from each scanning date were calculate to model plant growth over time. These results were resampled to match the spatial resolution of the WorldView-2 images, which had to orthorectified using a high resolution digital elevation model and atmosphere corrected using the ATCOR Software package. A high direct correlation of the NDVI calculated from the WorldView-2 sensor and the dry biomass was found in the beginning of June. At the same date, the heights from laser scanning can also explain a certain amount of the biomass variation (<i>r</i><sup>2</sup> = 0.6). By combining the NDVI from WorldView-2 and the height from the laser scanner with a linear model, the R2 reaches higher values of 0.86. To further understand the relationship between CSM derived crop heights and reflection indices, a comparison on a pixel basis was performed. Interestingly, the correlation of the NDVI and the crop height is rather low at the beginning of June (<i>r</i><sup>2</sup> = 0,4, <i>n</i> = 1857) and increases significantly (<i>R</i><sup>2</sup> = 0,79, <i>N</i> = 1857) at a later stage.


2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulf Soederman ◽  
Asa Persson ◽  
Johanna Toepel ◽  
Simon Ahlberg

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 57-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Hollaus ◽  
W. Wagner ◽  
K. Kraus

Abstract. Digital terrain models form the basis for distributed hydrologic models as well as for two-dimensional hydraulic river flood models. The technique used for generating high accuracy digital terrain models has shifted from stereoscopic aerial-photography to airborne laser scanning during the last years. Since the disastrous floods 2002 in Austria, large airborne laser-scanning flight campaigns have been carried out for several river basins. Additionally to the topographic information, laser scanner data offer also the possibility to estimate object heights (vegetation, buildings). Detailed land cover maps can be derived in conjunction with the complementary information provided by high-resolution colour-infrared orthophotos. As already shown in several studies, the potential of airborne laser scanning to provide data for hydrologic/hydraulic applications is high. These studies were mostly constraint to small test sites. To overcome this spatial limitation, the current paper summarises the experiences to process airborne laser scanner data for large mountainous regions, thereby demonstrating the applicability of this technique in real-world hydrological applications.


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