The influence of scanner parameters on the extraction of tree metrics from FARO Photon 120 terrestrial laser scans

Abstract

In the present study the influence of the scanner parameters, scan resolution (angular step size), scan speed (number of laser pulses per second), and pulse duration, on tree stem detection, stem diameter and volume extraction from phase-shift FARO Photon 120 TLS data was assessed. Additionally the effects of a data post processing (filtering of raw scan data) were investigated. All analyses were carried out based on single and merged scan data. It could be shown that scan speed, pulse duration and data filtering only marginally affect stem detection rates and stem diameter and volume estimation accuracies. By contrast scan resolution was found to have an effect, the magnitude of which, however, is range-dependent. For example mean stem detection rates for the three different scan resolutions tested were found to be equal in near range, but decreased more strongly for the lower scan resolutions in far range. With regard to the stem diameter extraction, scan resolution did not affect stem diameter at breast height (DBH) estimation accuracy, but limited the range within which DBH could be reliably extracted. The root mean squared error (RMSE) for DBH extracted from the single scan data was found to be significantly larger compared to the RMSE for DBH extracted from the merged scan data. Single scan data yielded stem volume estimates with lower accuracies, too. This study demonstrated that it is possible to maximize sampling efficiency by using scanner parameter sets with low scanning times (i.e., low scan resolution, high scan speed) without significantly losing estimation accuracy. If maximum accuracy is desired for both DBH and stem volume, the acquisition of multiple scans with a subsequent data merging is required.