Original scientific paper
Pre-harvest Assessment based on LiDAR Data
Hans Rudolf Heinimann
; Institute of Terrestrial Ecosystems Department of Environmental Systems ETH Zurich Universitaetsstrasse 22, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland
Jochen Breschan
; Institute of Terrestrial Ecosystems Department of Environmental Systems ETH Zurich Universitaetsstrasse 22, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland
Abstract
Sourcing is the first line of competitiveness of timber supply networks, identifying and locating stands to be harvested that best fit to market demands. The sourcing process is difficult because information is either only available on an aggregated level or is even unavailable, e.g. on non-industrial forest owner’s land. Our study aimed to explore a LiDAR-data-based approach to improve the sourcing of stands to be harvested. We developed a spatially explicit approach, consisting of three steps: (1) harvest screening at the management unit scale or even larger, (2) location and delineation of cutting units, and (3) characterization of tree attributes that are required for stand (cutting unit)-level bucking optimization. The study resulted in the following major findings. First, a tree map represented with Voronoi cells is a useful tool to support the harvest screening process, because it is easily readable and understandable, even by operations personnel. Second, cutting unit location and delineation can easily be done on the tree map, too. Third, the estimation of stem distribution over DBH of a cutting unit may easily be extracted from the spatial tree map database, assuming that there is a deterministic relationship between tree height and DBH. However, there are still issues to be improved, such as comparison of LiDAR-based results with ground-truth, the improvement of LiDAR-based tree delineation methods, the improvement of the estimation of stems over both DBH and tree height, or a mathematical formulation and solution of cutting unit layout.
Keywords
LiDAR; tree delineation; Voronoi tessellation; harvest layout planning; pre-harvest assessment
Hrčak ID:
116814
URI
Publication date:
3.9.2012.
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