Abstract
Conventional discrete return airborne lidar systems, used in the commercial sector for efficient generation of high quality spatial data, have been considered for the past decade to be an ideal choice for various mapping applications. Unlike two-dimensional aerial imagery, the elevation component of airborne lidar data provides the ability to represent vertical structure details with very high precision, which is an advantage for many lidar applications focusing on the analysis of elevated features such as 3D vegetation mapping. However, the use of conventional airborne discrete return lidar systems for some of these applications has often been limited, mostly due to relatively coarse vertical resolution and insufficient number of multiple measurements in vertical domain. For this reason, full waveform airborne sensors providing more detailed representation of target vertical structure have often been considered as a preferable choice in some areas of 3D vegetation mapping application, such as forestry research. This paper presents an overview of the specific features of airborne lidar technology concerning 3D mapping applications, particularly vegetation mapping. Certain key performance characteristics of lidar sensors important for the quality of vegetation mapping are discussed and illustrated by the advanced capabilities of the ALTM-Orion, a new discrete return sensor manufactured by Optech Incorporated. It is demonstrated that advanced discrete return sensors with enhanced 3D mapping capabilities can produce data of enhanced quality, which can represent complex structures of vegetation targets at the level of details equivalent in some aspects to the content of full waveform data. It is also shown that recent advances in conventional airborne lidar technology bear the potential to create a new application niche, where high quality dense point clouds, enhanced by fully recorded intensity for multiple returns, may provide sufficient information for modeling and analysis, which have traditionally been applied mostly to full waveform data.
Highlights
For over two decades airborne lidar technology has been successfully used for various 3D mapping applications including vegetation and forestry research
Lidar sensors currently used for 3D vegetation mapping and forestry research can be categorized as either discrete return (DR) or full waveform (FW) systems [16,17]
For the last two decades, the use of airborne lidar technology in certain 3D vegetation mapping applications has often been based on analysis of the canopy profiles recorded by full waveform sensors
Summary
For over two decades airborne lidar technology has been successfully used for various 3D mapping applications including vegetation and forestry research. Commercial lidar systems had the ability to capture only two discrete returns for each emitted laser pulse [7] This feature, though seemingly modest compared with today’s advanced lidar systems, provided enriched information for new applications with some elements of 3D data analysis such as feature extraction in forested [8] or urban areas [9]. The number of recorded measurements is determined by several factors including sensor hardware and data flow design and may be limited by a number from a few tens to a few hundreds of measurements This provides a quasi-continuous recording of the reflected energy for each emitted laser pulse. Due to the limited capabilities of processing and analysis software for FW data, more data does not always translate into more or better information for data interpretation [17]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
