Canopy density measures such as the Leaf Area Index (LAI) have become standardized mapping products derived from airborne and terrestrial Light Detection And Ranging (aLiDAR and tLiDAR, respectively) data. A specific application of LiDAR point clouds is their integration into radiative transfer models (RTM) of varying complexity. Using, e.g., ray tracing, this allows flexible simulations of sub...

Amongst all the methodologies readily available to estimate forest canopy and aboveground carbon (AGC), in-situ plot surveys and airborne laser scanning systems appear to be powerful assets. However, they are limited to relatively local scales. In this work, we have developed a full-waveform UV lidar, named ULICE (Ultraviolet LIdar for Canopy Experiment), as an airborne demonstrator for future ...

In this paper, a new GIS workflow for fully automated urban vegetation and tree parameter extraction from airborne LiDAR data is presented. The strengths of both rasterand point cloud-based methods are combined, in order to derive a vegetation map layer as well as single tree parameters (e.g. tree height and crown width) in an efficient way. The workflow is implemented in GRASS GIS making use o...

The movements of organisms and the resultant flows of ecosystem services are strongly shaped by landscape connectivity. Studies of urban ecosystems have relied on two-dimensional (2D) measures of greenspace structure to calculate connectivity. It is now possible to explore three-dimensional (3D) connectivity in urban vegetation using waveform lidar technology that measures the full 3D structure...

Land cover mapping of the urban environment by means of remote sensing remains a distinct challenge due to the strong spectral heterogeneity and geometric complexity of urban scenes. Airborne imaging spectroscopy and laser altimetry have each made remarkable contributions to urban mapping but synergistic use of these relatively recent data sources in an urban context is still largely underexplo...

The study highlights a new method for the delineation of tree crowns and the detection of stem positions of single trees from dense airborne LIDAR data. At first, we combine a method for surface reconstruction, which robustly interpolates the canopy height model (CHM) from the LIDAR data, with a watershed algorithm. Stem positions of the tallest trees in the tree segments are subsequently deriv...

The rapid development of the airborne LiDAR systems paves the way for the use of the LiDAR technology in different bathymetric and topographic applications. LiDAR has been used effectively for digital terrain/surface modelling by measuring the range from the sensor to the earth surface. Information can be extracted on the geometry of the scanned features (e.g. buildings, roads) or surfaces elev...

Nowadays, lidar has been accepted as one of the important sensors providing accurate and dense 3D point cloud from earth surface terrain and water bathymetry. The basic idea of using lidar stems from the problem of measuring water depth without direct contacting with the water body or without any instrument mounted on the water surface in shallow regions. Bathymetric lidar that uses two differe...

The shape and amplitude of the bathymetric lidar waveforms (the recorded time history of the reflected lidar pulses) contain information about the attenuation of the water and the bottom reflectivity in the survey area. This study considers the factors that affect the amplitude of the bottom return and examines the use of the amplitude of the bottom return to distinguishing between different bo...