Extraction of non-forest trees for biomass assessment based on airborne and terrestrial LiDAR data

Abstract

The main goal of the federal funded project 'LiDAR based biomass assessment' is the nationwide investigation of the biomass potential coming from wood cuttings of non-forest trees. In this context, first and last pulse airborne laserscanning (F+L) data serve as preferred database. First of all, mandatory field calibrations are performed for pre-defined grove types. For this purpose, selected reference groves are captured by full-waveform airborne laserscanning (FWF) and terrestrial laserscanning (TLS) data in different foliage conditions. The paper is reporting about two methods for the biomass assessment of non-forest trees. The first method covers the determination of volume-to-biomass conversion factors which relate the reference above-ground biomass (AGB) estimated from allometric functions with the laserscanning derived vegetation volume. The second method is focused on a 3D Normalized Cut segmentation adopted for non-forest trees and the follow-on biomass calculation based on segmentation-derived tree features. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.