Forest and Wood Products

Forest and Wood Products

Assessing the performance of a handheld mobile laser scanner to estimate tree height

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors
Seyed Ali Naghibi Rad 1
Ali Asghar Darvish Sefat 1
Parviz Fatehi 1
Manochehr Namiranian 1
Mohammad Saadat Seresht 2
Mehdi Boroumand 3
1 Department of Forestry and Forest Economics, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Tehran, Karaj, Iran.
2 Department of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, School of Surveying and Geospatial Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.
3 Nama Pardaz Rayaneh Company, Tehran, Iran.
10.22059/jfwp.2025.380870.1308
Abstract
Measuring and estimating the structural attributes of trees is a fundamental component of forest management and essential for most research in forest sciences. Nowadays, laser scanners (terrestrial and mobile) enable continuous scanning of forested areas, generating point clouds to estimate tree structural attributes. This study evaluated the ability of the GeoSLAM ZEB-REVO handheld mobile laser scanner to estimate tree structural attributes, specifically total height and trunk height. The research was conducted in Karaj Botanical Garden, covering 7.2 hectares with uneven-aged, multi-layered tree stands. Two approaches, i.e. manual and automatic, were applied to the processed point clouds to estimate total and trunk height. For validation, these attributes were measured in the field using a laser range finder. The results showed that the manual and automatic methods estimated total height with RMSE values of 3.17 and 3.21 meters and rRMSE values of 25.48% and 25.80%, respectively. Trunk height estimation yielded RMSE and rRMSE values of 0.47 and 2.56 meters and 12.66% and 69.67% for the manual and automatic methods, respectively. Based on our results, GeoSLAM's ability to estimate total height is weak, while trunk height can be estimated with high accuracy.
Keywords
Forest
Mobile laser scanner
Point cloud
Total height
Trunk height
Subjects
  • Seidel, D., Ehbrecht, M., Dorji, Y., Jambay, J., Ammer, C., & Annighöfer, P. (2019). Identifying architectural characteristics that determine tree structural complexity. Trees, 33(3), 911-919.
  • Shashkov, M., Ivanova, N., Shanin, V., & Grabarnik, P. (2019). Ground surveys versus UAV photography: the comparison of two tree crown mapping techniques. In Information Technologies in the Research of Biodiversity: Proceedings of the International Conference" Information Technologies in the Research of Biodiversity", 11–14 September, 2018, Irkutsk, Russia (pp. 48-56). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
  • Sasanifar, s., & Namiranian, M. (2017). Survey equality of two instrument of measurement set of distance and azimuth (Trupulse360) and sonto Clinometers in measurement of tree height. Journal of Conservation and Utilization of Natural Resources, 6(1), 15-26. (In Persian)
  • Wilkes, P., Lau, A., Disney, M., Calders, K., Burt, A., de Tanago, J.G., Bartholomeus, H., Brede, B., & Herold, M. (2017). Data acquisition considerations for terrestrial laser scanning of forest plots. Remote Sensing of Environment, 196, 140-153.
  • Vosselman, G., & Maas, H.G. (2010). Airborne and terrestrial laser scanning. CRC press.
  • Forsman, M., Holmgren, J., & Olofsson, K. (2016). Tree stem diameter estimation from mobile laser scanning using line-wise intensity-based clustering. Forests, 7(9), 206.
  • Yurtseven, H., Çoban, S., Akgül, M., & Akay, A. O. (2019). Individual tree measurements in a planted woodland with terrestrial laser scanner. Turkish Journal of Agriculture and Forestry, 43(2), 192-208.
  • St-Onge, B., & Vepakomma, U. (2004). Assessing forest gap dynamics and growth using multi-temporal laser-scanner data. Power, Vol. XXXVI - 8/W2, 173-178.
  • Balenović, I., Liang, X., Jurjević, L., Hyyppä, J., Seletković, A., & Kukko, A. (2021). Hand-held personal laser scanning–current status and perspectives for forest inventory application. Croatian Journal of Forest Engineering: Journal for Theory and Application of Forestry Engineering, 42(1), 165-183.
  • Ducey, M., Astrup, R., Pretzsch H.C., Seifert S., Tikina A., Larson B.C., & Coates, K.D. (2011). Use of terrestrial LIDAR for quantifying crown competition, crown efficiency, tree growth and site type.
  • Chen, S., Liu, H., Feng, Z., Shen, C., & Chen, P. (2019). Applicability of personal laser scanning in forestry inventory. PLoS One, 14(2), e0211392.
  • Pazhouhan, I., Najafi, A., Kamkar Rouhani, A., & Vahidi, J. (2017). Extraction of individual tree parameters by using terrestrial laser scanner data in Hyricanian Forest. Ecopersia, 5(3), 1837-1847.
  • Olofsson, K., Holmgren, J., & Olsson, H. (2014). Tree stem and height measurements using terrestrial laser scanning and the RANSAC algorithm. Remote Sensing, 6(5), 4323-4344.
  • Ghimire, S., Xystrakis, F., & Koutsias, N. (2017). Using Terrestrial Laser Scanning to Measure Forest Inventory Parameters in a Mediterranean Coniferous Stand of Western Greece. PFG–Journal of Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Geoinformation Science, 85(4), 213-225.
  • Liu, G., Wang, J., Dong, P., Chen, Y., & Liu, Z. (2018). Estimating individual tree height and diameter at breast height (DBH) from terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) data at plot level. Forests, 9(7), 398.
  • Cabo, C., Del Pozo, S., Rodríguez-Gonzálvez, P., Ordóñez, C., & González-Aguilera, D. (2018). Comparing terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and wearable laser scanning (WLS) for individual tree modeling at plot level. Remote Sensing, 10(4), 540.
  • Del Perugia, B., Giannetti, F., Chirici, G., & Travaglini, D. (2019). Influence of scan density on the estimation of single-tree attributes by hand-held mobile laser scanning. Forests, 10(3), 277.
  • Tockner, A., Gollob,C., Kraßnitzer, R., Ritter, T., & Nothdurft, A. (2022) Automatic tree crown segmentation using dense forest point clouds from Personal Laser Scanning (PLS). International Journal of Applied Earth Observations and Geoinformation, 114, 103025.
  • Nocerino, E., Menna, F., Remondino, F., Toschi, I., & Rodríguez-Gonzálvez, P. (2017, June). Investigation of indoor and outdoor performance of two portable mobile mapping systems. In Videometrics, Range Imaging, and Applications XIV (Vol. 10332, pp. 125-139). SPIE.
  • Sammartano, G., & Spanò, A. (2018). Point clouds by SLAM-based mobile mapping systems: accuracy and geometric content validation in multisensor survey and stand-alone acquisition. Applied Geomatics, 10(4), 317-339.
  • Naghibi Rad, S.A., Darvishsefat, A.A., Fatehi, P., Namiranian, M., Saadat Seresht, M., & Boroumand, M. (2024). Evaluation of Octree-Based Segmentation (OBS) Method to Seperate Ground Point Based on the Handheld Laser Scanner Data. Iranian Journal of Forest, 16(1), 137-155. (In Persian)
  • Namiranian, M. (2010). Measurement of Tree and Forest Biometry. University of Tehran Press, Tehran. (In Persian)
  • Powers, D.M. (2020). Evaluation: from precision, recall and F-measure to ROC, informedness, markedness and correlation. arXiv preprint arXiv:2010.16061.
  • Taye, M., Mengistu, D., & Sahlu, D. (2023). Performance evaluation of multiple satellite rainfall data sets in central highlands of Abbay Basin, Ethiopia. European Journal of Remote Sensing, 56(1), 2233686.
  • Hossin, M., & Sulaiman, M. N. (2015). A review on evaluation metrics for data classification evaluations. International Journal of Data Mining & Knowledge Management Process, 5(2), 1.
  • Kushwaha, S. K. P., Singh, A., Jain, K., Vybostok, J., & Mokros, M. (2023). Qualitative Analysis of Tree Canopy Top Points Extraction from Different Terrestrial Laser Scanner Combinations in Forest Plots. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 12(6), 250.
Forest and Wood Products
Volume 77, Issue 4
Winter 2025
Pages 391-405