Forestry

Lidar data has been used in forestry for many years. It is particularly useful for measuring tree heights and assessing biomass volume.

Tree heights measured from lidar data are more accurate than those from aerial photogrammetry. The underlying terrain height is measured at the same time as the top of the canopy, leading to very accurate tree height measurements.

Full waveform lidar data, as supplied by Spatial Scientific Technologies, can penetrate vegetation canopies, exposing the internal certical structure of the vegetation. This provides highly accurate measurements of the three dimensional structure of a canopy.