A Case Study of UAS Borne Laser Scanning for Measurement of Tree Stem Diameter

Diameter at breast height (DBH) is one of the most important parameter in forestry. With increasing use of terrestrial and airborne laser scanning in forestry, new exceeding possibilities to directly derive DBH emerge. In particular, high resolution point clouds from laser scanners on board unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are becoming available over forest areas. In this case study, DBH estimation from a UAS point cloud based on modeling the relevant part of the tree stem with a cylinder, is analyzed with respect to accuracy and completeness. As reference, manually measured DBHs and DBHs from terrestrial laser scanning point clouds are used for comparison. We demonstrate that accuracy and completeness of the cylinder fit are depending on the stem diameter. Stems with DBH > 20 cm feature almost 100% successful reconstruction with relative differences to the reference DBH of 9% (DBH 20–30 cm) down to 1.8% for DBH > 40 cm.