U-061 - Terrestrial Lidar Scanning for Aboveground Biomass and Ecological Ap
PI: Dr. Alan Strahler
Project Lead: Alan Strahler
Funding Source: NSF/DBI Award 1455636
Location: Harvard Forest, Central Massachusetts
Dates: 2017-04-24 to 2017-04-28
Project Summary
Our project is a research coordination network (RCN), in which a group of researchers work together to advance the technology and applications of terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) in forest ecology. Vegetation, particularly forest structure, affects many forest ecosystem processes, but is quite difficult to measure accurately and consistently. With terrestrial laser scanning, particularly with point clouds merged from multiple scans, it is possible to reconstruct an individual forest stand uniquely, and estimate such structural quantities as canopy height, mean tree diameter, tree count density, leaf area index, volume and above-ground biomass of individual trees and stands, and profiles of leaves and woody materials with height. The goals of the project are to: (1) identify a pathway to a low-cost TLS with a primary objective of estimating forest biomass quickly and easily to facilitate measurement and monitoring of above ground biomass; and (2) develop new applications of TLS in forest ecology. The TLS RCN is an activity funded by the US National Science Foundation that seeks to advance terrestrial lidar scanning for vegetation study. The NSF funding supports communication, travel, exchanges, professional effort, and calibration activities of the network. The TLS data requested are required for an RCN calibration activity, in which a number of research and commercial TLS instruments will be calibrated for the retrieval of above-ground biomass of trees in a mixed hardwood-conifer stand at Harvard Forest in Petersham, MA. The calibration standard will be trees that are destructively measured and sampled to determine the volumes and biomasses of trunks, branches by branch order, and fine branches and leaves; these measurements will be carried out by partner universities supported by the US Forest Service. Calibration will be conducted with deciduous trees in leaf in August, 2017; however, leaf-off scans in April, 2017, are needed to determine the expected limits of calibration variance without obscuration in the leaf-on canopy. UNAVCO is requested to provide the data because they use the best quality commercial instrument (Riegl VZ-400 or VZ-1000) and this model of instrument is not available in the US from participants in the RCN during the needed time period. [Adapted from UNAVCO PSR]