基于LiDAR点云数据的树冠空隙度指数分析

分形维数法是分析空间结构分布的一种典型方法,但它对于区分不同的分布形式还存在缺陷。针对这一问题,该文介绍了空隙度指数的定义和树冠空隙度的计算方法;以模拟的树冠点云数据为对象,提出了一种基于三维凸包和三维滑动盒算法的激光雷达(Li DAR)点云数据空隙度分析方法,详尽分析了不同冠型产生的空隙度指数差异;并利用4棵实测的树冠点云数据做检验;最后阐述了空隙度指数在树冠空间异质性分析研究中的作用,并对其应用范围和前景作了展望。结果表明:划分尺度相同时,在一定的尺度范围内,锥型树冠、半球型和半椭球型树冠的差别可以通过空隙度指数曲线有效地区分,实测树冠的结果也体现了空隙度指数对于判断树冠空间结构的有效性。     

A forestry GIS-based study on evaluating the potential of imaging spectroscopy in mapping forest land fertility

Fertility, or the availability of nutrients and water, controls forest productivity. It affects its carbon sequestration, and thus the forest's effect on climate, as well as its commercial value. Although the availability of nutrients cannot be measured directly using remote sensing methods, fertility alters several vegetation traits detectable from the reflectance spectra of the forest stand, including its pigment content and water stress. However, forest reflectance is also influenced by other factors, such as species composition and stand age. Here, we present a case study demonstrating how data obtained using imaging spectroscopy is correlated with site fertility. The study was carried out in Hyytiälä, Finland, in the southern boreal forest zone. We used a database of state-owned forest stands including basic forestry variables and a site fertility index. To test the suitability of imaging spectroscopy with different spatial and spectral resolutions for site fertility mapping, we performed two airborne acquisitions using different sensor configurations. First, the sensor was flown at a high altitude with high spectral resolution resulting in a pixel size in the order of a tree crown. Next, the same area was flown to provide reflectance data with sub-meter spatial resolution. However, to maintain usable signal-to-noise ratios, several spectral channels inside the sensor were combined, thus reducing spectral resolution. We correlated a number of narrowband vegetation indices (describing canopy biochemical composition, structure, and photosynthetic activity) on site fertility. Overall, site fertility had a significant influence on the vegetation indices but the strength of the correlation depended on dominant species. We found that high spatial resolution data calculated from the spectra of sunlit parts of tree crowns had the strongest correlation with site fertility.     

An automatic extraction method for individual tree crowns based on self-adaptive mutual information and tile computing

Forest data acquisition, which is of crucial importance for modeling global biogeochemical cycles and climate, makes a contribution to building the ecological Digital Earth (DE). Due to the complex calculations and large volumes of data associated with high-resolution images of large areas, accurate and effective extraction of individual tree crowns remains challenging. In this study, two GeoEye-1 panchromatic images of Beihai and Ningbo in China with areas of 5 and 25 km², respectively, were used as experimental data to establish a novel method for the automatic extraction of individual tree crowns based on a self-adaptive mutual information (SMI) algorithm and tile computing technology (SMI-TCT). To evaluate the performance of the algorithm, four commonly used algorithms were also applied to extract the individual tree crowns. The overall accuracy of the proposed method for the two experimental areas was superior to that of the four other algorithms, with maximum extraction accuracies of 85.7% and 63.8%. Moreover, the results also indicated that the novel method was suitable for individual tree crowns extraction in sizeable areas because of the multithread parallel computing technology.     

Individual tree crown approach for predicting site index in boreal forests using airborne laser scanning and hyperspectral data

Site productivity is essential information for sustainable forest management and site index (SI) is the most common quantitative measure of it. The SI is usually determined for individual tree species based on tree height and the age of the 100 largest trees per hectare according to stem diameter. The present study aimed to demonstrate and validate a methodology for the determination of SI using remotely sensed data, in particular fused airborne laser scanning (ALS) and airborne hyperspectral data in a forest site in Norway. The applied approach was based on individual tree crown (ITC) delineation: tree species, tree height, diameter at breast height (DBH), and age were modelled and predicted at ITC level using 10-fold cross validation. Four dominant ITCs per 400 m² plot were selected as input to predict SI at plot level for Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) and Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.). We applied an experimental setup with different subsets of dominant ITCs with different combinations of attributes (predicted or field-derived) for SI predictions. The results revealed that the selection of the dominant ITCs based on the largest DBH independent of tree species, predicted the SI with similar accuracy as ITCs matched with field-derived dominant trees (RMSE: 27.6% vs 23.3%). The SI accuracies were at the same level when dominant species were determined from the remotely sensed or field data (RMSE: 27.6% vs 27.8%). However, when the predicted tree age was used the SI accuracy decreased compared to field-derived age (RMSE: 27.6% vs 7.6%). In general, SI was overpredicted for both tree species in the mature forest, while there was an underprediction in the young forest. In conclusion, the proposed approach for SI determination based on ITC delineation and a combination of ALS and hyperspectral data is an efficient and stable procedure, which has the potential to predict SI in forest areas at various spatial scales and additionally to improve existing SI maps in Norway.