Forestry Applications of Airborne Laser Scanning Concepts and Case Studies [Hardcover]

Airborne laser scanning (ALS) has emerged as one of the most promising remote sensing technologies to provide data for research and operational applications in a wide range of disciplines related to management of forest ecosystems. This book provides a comprehensive, state-of-the-art review of the research and application of ALS in a broad range of forest-related disciplines, especially forest inventory and forest ecology. However, this book is more than just a collection of individual contributions  it consists of a well-composed blend of chapters dealing with fundamental methodological issues and contributions reviewing and illustrating the use of ALS within various domains of application. The reviews provide a comprehensive and unique overview of recent research and applications that researchers, students and practitioners in forest remote sensing and forest ecosystem assessment should consider as a useful reference text.

1. Introduction to forest applications of airborne laser scanning; Jari Vauhkonen et al.- PART I  Methodological issues.- 2. Laser pulse interaction with forest canopy  geometric and radiometric issues; Andreas Roncat et al.- 3. Full-waveform airborne laser scanning systems and their possibilities in forest applications; Markus Hollaus et al.- 4. Integrating airborne laser scanning with data from global navigation satellite systems and optical sensors; Rub?n Valbuena.- 5. Segmentation of forest to tree objects; Barbara Koch et al.- 6. The semi-individual tree crown approach; Johannes Breidenbach, Rasmus Astrup.- 7. Tree species recognition based on airborne laser scanning and complementary data sources; Jari Vauhkonen et al.- 8. Estimation of biomass components by airborne laser scanning; Sorin C. Popescu, Marius Hauglin.- 9. Predicting tree diameter distributions; &l£5