Quantifying tropical forest stand structure through terrestrial and UAV laser scanning fusion

Résumé

Obtaining accurate and detailed structural forest information has been revolutionized with the emergence of laser scanning. The sampling limitations and potential of the different laser scanning platforms (e.g. TLS, UAV-LS) have, however, not been fully explored for dense tropical forests. We developed a novel method for the fusion of these platforms and calculated their point density profiles to gain insight in their sampling abilities. Our results reveal the shortcomings of TLS to sample the top of the canopy in a tropical rainforest. Moreover, we show that expensive multiple returns but also cheaper single returns UAV-LS systems could be applied to sample the forest structure.