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Harvard Forest Symposium Abstract 2013

  • Title: Exploring the synergies between airborne and terrestrial LiDAR sensing for forest structural mapping
  • Primary Author: Kerry Cawse-Nicholson (Rochester Institute of Technology)
  • Additional Authors: Tom Kampe (NEON, Inc); Dave Kelbe (Rochester Institute of Technology); Keith Krause (NEON, Inc); Paul Romanczyk (Rochester Institute of Technology); Jan van Aardt (Rochester Institute of Technology)
  • Abstract:

    The National Ecological and Observatory Network (NEON) is a research initiative that will collect long-term ecological land-use data throughout the United States for forecasting and monitoring purposes. Harvard Forest is a key research area in the NEON data collection plan. In August 2013, data over Harvard Forest were collected by a NEON Airborne Observation Platform (AOP) acquisition. This collect included airborne hyperspectral imaging data (next-generation AVIRIS), discrete and waveform LiDAR (Optech Gemini), and high-resolution visible imagery. Concurrently, a team from Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) collected plot-level scans with a terrestrial LiDAR instrument, leaf area index (LAI) measurements acquired by an AccuPAR LP-80, along with associated forest inventory data. The terrestrial LiDAR instrument is a SICK LMS-151 that has been mounted on a rotating platform for spherical coverage. The scanning is performed with a 0.25 degree angular step-width in both azimuthal and zenith directions. This SICK LMS-151 can record the range and backscattered intensity at 905nm for up to two returns.



    The terrestrial LiDAR data will be used both to supplement the NEON airborne data and to validate the airborne data via detailed plot-level inventory. While terrestrial LiDAR lacks the large-area coverage achievable via the airborne instruments, it provides important detailed information about the sub-canopy structure of the forest that may be difficult to detect in airborne data. These data are important for biomass and forest structure estimates. Terrestrial LiDAR scans were collected at 22 sites (20 NEON AOP validation sites and 2 Boston University/University of Massachusetts at Boston sites) throughout Harvard Forest and Quabbin Reservoir, allowing us to study the relationship between these terrestrial data and those collected by the NEON AOP. For each 20m×20m site, a LiDAR scan was taken every five meters in a regular grid. Preliminary research has centered on stem detection and tree structure modeling, which will be extended to green and woody biomass estimates, as well as LAI assessments.

  • Research Category: Ecological Informatics and Modelling