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Spectral and spatial information from a novel dual-wavelength full-waveform terrestrial laser scanner for forest ecology

Danson, FM; Schofield, LA; Sasse, F

Spectral and spatial information from a novel dual-wavelength full-waveform terrestrial laser scanner for forest ecology Thumbnail


Authors

LA Schofield

F Sasse



Abstract

The Salford Advanced Laser Canopy Analyser (SALCA) is an experimental terrestrial laser scanner designed and built specifically to measure the structural and biophysical properties of forest canopies. SALCA is a pulsed dual-wavelength instrument with co-aligned laser beams recording backscattered energy at 1063 and 1545 nm; it records full-waveform data by sampling the backscattered energy at 1 GHz giving a range resolution of 150 mm. The finest angular sampling resolution is 1 mrad and around 9 million waveforms are recorded over a hemisphere above the tripod-mounted scanner in around 110 minutes. Starting in 2010, data pre-processing and calibration approaches, data analysis, and information extraction methods, were developed and a wide range of field experiments conducted. The overall objective is to exploit the spatial, spectral and temporal characteristics of the data to produce ecologically useful information on forest and woodland canopies including leaf area index, plant area volume density and leaf biomass, and to explore the potential for tree species identification and classification. This paper outlines the key challenges in instrument development, highlights the potential applications for providing new data for forest ecology, and describes new avenues for exploring information-rich data from the next generation of TLS instruments like SALCA.

Citation

Danson, F., Schofield, L., & Sasse, F. (2018). Spectral and spatial information from a novel dual-wavelength full-waveform terrestrial laser scanner for forest ecology. Interface Focus, 8(2), https://doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2017.0049

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Dec 20, 2017
Online Publication Date Feb 16, 2018
Publication Date Apr 6, 2018
Deposit Date Jan 15, 2018
Publicly Available Date Jan 15, 2018
Journal Interface Focus
Electronic ISSN 2042-8901
Publisher The Royal Society
Volume 8
Issue 2
DOI https://doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2017.0049
Publisher URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2017.0049
Related Public URLs http://rsfs.royalsocietypublishing.org/
Additional Information Funders : National Science Foundation
Projects : Research Collaboration Network
Grant Number: grant number DBI-1455636

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