The Use of a Mobile Laser Scanning System for Mapping Large Forest Plots

Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) has been demonstrated to be an efficient measurement method in plot-level forest inventories. A permanent sample plot in national forest inventories is typically a small area of forest with a radius of approximately 10 m. In practice, whether reference data can be automatically and accurately collected for larger plot sizes is of great interest. It is expensive to collect references in large areas utilizing conventional measurement tools. The application of static TLS is a possible choice but is very challenging due to its lack of mobility. In this letter, a mobile laser scanning (MLS) system was tested and its implications for forest inventories were discussed. The system is composed of a high performance laser scanner, a navigation unit, and a six-wheeled all-terrain vehicle. In this experiment, about 0.4 ha forest area was mapped utilizing the MLS system. The stem mapping accuracy was 87.5%; the root mean square errors of the estimations of the diameter at breast height and the location were 2.36 cm and 0.28 m, respectively. These results indicate that the MLS system has the potential to accurately map large forest plots and further research on mapping accuracy and cost-benefit analyses is needed.