Chapter 14 - LiDAR Applications in Other Ecosystems

Abstract

Besides forest ecosystems, light detection and ranging (LiDAR) has been broadly used for various applications in other areas, such as agricultural, grassland, urban, and wetland ecosystems. The applications of LiDAR in these ecosystems mainly focus on extracting and modeling vegetation structural attributes and estimating vegetation functional attributes. Owing to the uniqueness of each ecosystem, selecting an appropriate LiDAR platform is important, and near-surface LiDAR platforms—such as backpack, mobile vehicle, and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)—have shown significant advantages. For example, specially designed field mobile phenotyping platforms with LiDAR as the core component have shown promise at accurately and rapidly extracting crop phenotypic attributes for breeding and precise cultivation management. In urban ecosystems, backpack or mobile LiDAR systems are more flexible and efficient due to UAV flight restrictions. This chapter first introduces the representative applications of LiDAR in these ecosystems, after which the corresponding challenges and future perspectives are highlighted.