Forest Inventory and Aboveground Biomass Estimation with Terrestrial LiDAR in the Tropical Forest of Malaysia

摘要

An accurate forest inventory is crucial for forest monitoring and quantifying forest abovegroundbiomass (AGB). This study aimed to investigate the feasibility of Terrestrial LaserScanning (TLS) in forest inventory and AGB estimation in the tropical forest of Malaysia.Individual trees were detected using manual and automatic detection methods. An averagetree detection rate of 99.55% and 93.75% were achieved using the manual and automaticdetection method respectively. The accuracy of the diameter at breast height (DBH) of treesmeasured from TLS was validated using field DBH as reference. A root means square error(RMSE) of 1.37 cm (6.60%) and 2.36cm (11.47%), respectively, were obtained for manually andautomatically measured TLS DBH. Similarly, TLS based tree height was validated usingAirborne Laser Scanner (ALS) height as a reference and resulted in RMSE of 1.74m (9.30%) and3.17m (17.40%) with manual and automatic method respectively. Finally, AGB was calculatedusing the variables derived from the TLS data. Results show an R~2 value of 0.98 and RMSE of0.08Mg. The results of this study confirmed that TLS as a nondestructive approach can providea very good estimation of forest attributes and AGB in the dense tropical forest conditions.