Measuring Trees with Lasers

https://www.oemoffhighway.com/electronics/smart-systems/telematics/press-release/10685285/treemetrics-releases-new-wave-technology-for-forestry-industry

Stands of trees take a long time to measure and inventory to see how many of what kind of tree is harvestable or not. Going out and measuring trees by hand is time consuming, slow, and now a thing of the past.

I have gotten the pleasure of working with LiDAR imaging from Terrestrial and Aerial Laser Scanning (TLS and ALS). These spatial data points are pinged from a plane or from a ground imaging unit. These points are recorded, creating a 3-D image.

In my experiences, I’ve noticed that getting the height of the trees as well as their live crown ratio has become very quick and easy. Along with these factors, I am able to perform a 100% stand inventory of all of the trees, instead of the tradition of sampling the forest, where there are a lot of potential errors.

LiDAR is the future of forest inventorying and will increase timber quality with a 100% inventory. I hope that I will be able to work more with LiDAR imaging