ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a broad understanding of laser-based forestry studies. After a summary of user requirements on forestry inventory, it introduces various laser scanning platforms, including airborne, mobile, terrestrial, and UAV. The scattering process in the forest is then discussed for airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR). The bulk of this chapter elaborates forest mensuration techniques, including canopy height retrieval and the corresponding accuracy by using airborne LiDAR, retrieval of tree or stand parameters from airborne, mobile, and terrestrial laser scanning, and tree species classification with multispectral airborne laser scanning data. Examples of change detection possibilities are also demonstrated with multitemporal aerial laser surveys.
