Highly Accurate Tree Models Derived from Terrestrial Laser Scan Data: A Method Description
1
Chair of Forest Growth, University of Freiburg, Tennenbacher Str. 4, 79106 Freiburg, Germany
2
Department of Geography, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK
3
NERC National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO), UK
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Forests 2014, 5(5), 1069-1105; https://doi.org/10.3390/f5051069
Received: 4 March 2014
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Revised: 15 April 2014
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Accepted: 13 May 2014
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Published: 22 May 2014
(This article belongs to the Special Issue LiDAR and Other Remote Sensing Applications in Mapping and Monitoring of Forests Structure and Biomass)
This paper presents a method for fitting cylinders into a point cloud, derived from a terrestrial laser-scanned tree. Utilizing high scan quality data as the input, the resulting models describe the branching structure of the tree, capable of detecting branches with a diameter smaller than a centimeter. The cylinders are stored as a hierarchical tree-like data structure encapsulating parent-child neighbor relations and incorporating the tree’s direction of growth. This structure enables the efficient extraction of tree components, such as the stem or a single branch. The method was validated both by applying a comparison of the resulting cylinder models with ground truth data and by an analysis between the input point clouds and the models. Tree models were accomplished representing more than 99% of the input point cloud, with an average distance from the cylinder model to the point cloud within sub-millimeter accuracy. After validation, the method was applied to build two allometric models based on 24 tree point clouds as an example of the application. Computation terminated successfully within less than 30 min. For the model predicting the total above ground volume, the coefficient of determination was 0.965, showing the high potential of terrestrial laser-scanning for forest inventories.
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Keywords:
TLS; terrestrial laser scanning; LiDAR; forestry; tree; stem; branch; volume; cylinder fitting
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MDPI and ACS Style
Hackenberg, J.; Morhart, C.; Sheppard, J.; Spiecker, H.; Disney, M. Highly Accurate Tree Models Derived from Terrestrial Laser Scan Data: A Method Description. Forests 2014, 5, 1069-1105. https://doi.org/10.3390/f5051069
AMA Style
Hackenberg J, Morhart C, Sheppard J, Spiecker H, Disney M. Highly Accurate Tree Models Derived from Terrestrial Laser Scan Data: A Method Description. Forests. 2014; 5(5):1069-1105. https://doi.org/10.3390/f5051069
Chicago/Turabian StyleHackenberg, Jan, Christopher Morhart, Jonathan Sheppard, Heinrich Spiecker, and Mathias Disney. 2014. "Highly Accurate Tree Models Derived from Terrestrial Laser Scan Data: A Method Description" Forests 5, no. 5: 1069-1105. https://doi.org/10.3390/f5051069
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