LiDAR – Agresta

Last September 5th, 2017, Nur Algeet, PhD in Forestry Engineering and specialist in remote sensing, and David García, expert in innovation and development, both of whom are part of the R&D team at AGRESTA, gave a presentation in the French city of Bordeaux as part of the Bordeaux Sciences Agro – Amphithéâtre Sylvae – Bâtiment Brémontier entitled “Remote sensing applied to the evaluation and management of forest resources: LiDAR and satellite data”(“Télédétection appliquée à l´évaluation et la gestion des ressources forestières : LiDAR et données satellitaires”).

The presentation formed part of the “Conférences des bois”, a series of conferences aimed at promoting and strengthening the image of the forestry sector among students and professionals which are being held every Tuesday throughout the year as part of the “Plateforme de Formation Supérieure Forêt Bois de l’Initiative d’Excellence de l’Université de Bordeaux”.

See the calendar for “Conférences des bois” 2017-2018: programme

All the conferences are shared with Quebec within the AQforêt-Bois agreement and can be followed live through videoconference. Each presentation is filmed and is made available to the general public.

Watch the presentation: video

The objective of the conference was to present and share the various remote sensing techniques currently available, highlighting each ones strengths and weaknesses and providing specific examples of how they can be applied in the sector and their impact on the forest and wood industry (benefits, disadvantages, business models etc.). New technologies and processes based on remote sensing, which until recently played no part in the forest-wood industry, are gradually strengthening, or even replacing, the traditional tools for forestry inventories and monitoring, and are indeed becoming indispensable. New opportunities are opening up thanks to the huge quantity of increasingly powerful, and easily obtainable satellite data now available which is cheap or even free, along with other high accuracy technologies such as LiDAR and photogrammetry.

Watch the presentation “Remote sensing applied to the evaluation and management of forest resources: LiDAR and satellite data”:”: presentation

The scientific journal iforest from the Italian Society of Silviculture and Forest Ecology has just published an article whose lead authors are researchers from AGRESTA who analysed various methods for generating high resolution cartography of forest biomass in tropical forests. The area studied, as a pilot study, was the National Volcano Park in Poás (Costa Rica), which has a high degree of structural and species diversity.

The journal iforest is Open Access, so the publication is freely available for any reader from the following link:

[button link=”http://www.sisef.it/iforest/contents/?id=ifor1744-009″ color=”green” newwindow=”yes”] Download article[/button]

This work validated the general LiDAR model for estimating aerial biomass in tropical forest proposed by Asnar and Mascaro in 2014 and the results were compared with those obtained from models specifically adjusted to the study area. All the models used are based on the variable top-of-canopy height (TCH) derived from the LiDAR digital model of height of vegetation. The results in the study area demonstrate that, firstly, the chosen tree allometry is of great importance if appropriate results are to be obtained, and, secondly, that the general model is a reliable alternative to the specifically adjusted local models (especially when no specific tree allometry is available for the area). With the general model, aerial biomass can be estimated in a new area on the basis of only field measurements of basal area (BA).

Top-of-canopy Height (TCH) and Basal Area (BA) values for Poás Volcano National
Park (Costa Rica). TCHvalues were obtained through LiDAR data and BA values were
derived from an origin-forced linear regression BA-TCH.

Location of Poás Volcano National Park in Alajuela Province (Costa Rica) and spatial distribution of field plots and Holdrige’s life zones in the area.

AGRESTA at the “Conférences de bois” in Bordeaux making a presentation on LiDAR and remote sensing and their application in the forestry sector

Article published in the scientific journal “iForest. Biogeosciences and Forestry”