Forest Structure Measurement in Tropical Rainforest using Laser Scanning Technology

Numerous measurements can be made to extract the forest structure. Forest structure is one of the main aspects of forest management. The precise estimation of forest structure is vital for some forestry applications. Thus, this study presents a novel non-destructive approach for the measurement of forest structure using laser scanning technologies of airborne LiDAR and Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS). The study area was located at the forest campus of the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia (FRIM), Kepong, Selangor. The elements of forest structure that were measured: were canopy height; plant density and basal area. The field survey was conducted over 3 plots of 25 m radius circular shape with a total of 60 trees with diameter at breast height (DBH) of 10 cm and above. The tree canopy height was estimated based on canopy height model (CHM) of LiDAR data. For plant density, it was estimated based on crown delineation created from CHM. While, for TLS data, the extraction of individual trees was done using Cyclone algorithm. The forest structure measurement obtained from laser scanning technologies is proven to be reliable with the root mean square error (RMSE) of 5.415, t-test of 3.011, and p-value of 0.004 for canopy height. For basal area, the mean of RMSE, t-test and p-value was 0.22589, 0.620 and 0.324 for the overall 3 plots, respectively. The result obtained for plant density was one tree per meter². The final outputs were presented as the map of CHM, plant density and basal area map. In conclusion, laser scanning measurement improves and provides a precise technique for forest structure measurement.