3D Point Clouds in Forest Remote Sensing

Dear Colleagues,

3D point clouds have become a well stablished data source for characterizing and monitoring forest structure. Particularly, the use of such data from active sensors, like airborne LiDAR, has confirmed its interest in forest studies from its early development in the 1970’s and 1980’s, to the establishment of robust and cost-efficient systems from the 1990’s onwards, due to the improvement of global positioning and inertial units (GNSS/IMU). Even though airborne LiDAR has been the prevalent technology in forest 3D point cloud acquisition, other alternative or complementary technologies has been also present in forest studies at different scales in the last decades, namely airborne/shuttle/satellite radar, terrain laser scanning or photogrammetry from either photogrammetric or consumer grade cameras. Regarding the latter, the fast evolving of the Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS), along with the streamlining of consumer grade cameras data processing by computer vision software, has popularized the use of ultra-high resolution 3D point clouds at an unprecedent cost-efficiency and spatial-temporal flexibility for local scale studies.

This Special Issue aims at studies covering different uses of 3D point clouds acquired by different sensors and platforms in forest sciences. Topics may cover anything from the classical estimation of forest variables at a tree or stand level, to more comprehensive aims and scales. Hence, multisource data integration (e.g., multispectral, hyperspectral, and thermal), multiscale approaches or studies focused on forest ecosystem services monitoring, among other issues, are welcome. Articles may address, but are not limited, to the following topics:

• Tree and stand variables inventory
• Forest land cover mapping and pattern analysis
• Forest planning and management
• Forest ecology
• Forest change
• Biodiversity and wildlife
• Forest fuel and fire studies
• Biotic and abiotic forest damage
• Biomass
• Forest plants functional traits
• Carbon cycle/sequestration
• Terrain analysis

Dr. Ramón Alberto Díaz Varela
Dr. Eduardo Manuel Gonzalez Ferreiro
Guest Editors

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