A Robust Algorithm for Constructing Pit-Free Canopy Height Model

Due to the penetration ability of airborne light detection and ranging (lidar) into tree crowns, data pits commonly appear in lidar-derived canopy height models (CHMs). They have a seriously negative effect on the quality of tree detection and subsequent biophysical measurements. To construct a pit-free CHM, an algorithm based on robust locally weighted regression and robust z-score was presented to remove data pits. The significant advantage of the new algorithm is parameter-free, which makes it efficient and robust for practical applications. A numerical test and a real-world example were respectively employed to assess the performance of our method for CHM construction, and its results were compared with those of three classical methods including natural neighbor interpolation of the highest point method, mean and median filters. The numerical test demonstrates that our algorithm is more accurate than the other methods for generating pit-free CHMs under the presence of data pits. The real-world example shows that compared with the classical methods, our method has a better ability of data pit removal. Moreover, our method performs better than the other methods for deriving plot-level maximum tree height from CHMs. In a word, the new method shows high potential for pit-free CHM construction.