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

Danson, FM; Schofield, LA; Sasse, F

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