Full Waveform Lidar Remote Sensing for Forest Inventory in New South Wales, Australia

Australia has the sixth largest forest area in the world, consisting of 164 million hectares covering 21% of the continent. The Australian government has invested in research for management of forests by construction of forest database and detection of forest change. The full waveform lidar study for the extraction of plot statistics such as percentile tree counts, stem measurement, and canopy cover, will contribute to forest resource management and analysis. Such study will be of benefit to the Forests New South Wales and other industries that require reliable forest resource data, such as land care, national defence, emergency services, and fire fighting authorities. This study aims to deliver increased sampling accuracy and objectivity at lower costs, to forest inventory using full waveform lidar. This involves a paradigm shift from 100% field survey dependent forest sampling to a mix of lidar plot interpretation with significantly fewer field plot samples. The process will enable the efficient measurement of thousands of forest resource field plots instead of the current few hundred. The outcome of the study is a pioneering processing platform that fully utilizes the potential of full waveform lidar data and that meets the current and future forest resource assessment and inventory requirements of the Forests New South Wales.