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Comparison of airborne laser scanning and digital stereo imagery for characterizing forest canopy gaps in coastal temperate rainforests
- Source :
- Remote Sensing of Environment. 208:1-14
- Publication Year :
- 2018
- Publisher :
- Elsevier BV, 2018.
-
Abstract
- Forest canopy gaps play an important role in forest dynamics. Airborne laser scanning (ALS) data provide demonstrated capacity to systematically and accurately detect and map canopy gaps over large forest areas. Digital aerial photogrammetry (DAP) is emerging as an alternative, lower-cost source of three-dimensional information for characterizing forest structure and modelling forest inventory attributes. In this study we compared the relative capacities of ALS and DAP data to map canopy gaps in a complex coastal temperate rainforest on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. We applied fixed- and variable-height threshold approaches for gap detection using both ALS and DAP data, and validated outcomes using independent data derived via visual image interpretation. Overall accuracies for ALS-derived gaps were 96.50% and 89.50% for the fixed- and variable-height threshold approaches respectively, compared to 59.50% and 50.00% for the DAP-derived gaps, with DAP data having large errors of omission (>88%). We found that 70% of ALS-derived gaps were identified in old seral stage stands (age > 250 years), while 65% of DAP-derived gaps were located in early seral stage stands (age
- Subjects :
- Canopy
Tree canopy
Forest inventory
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
Forest dynamics
0211 other engineering and technologies
Soil Science
Geology
02 engineering and technology
Rainforest
15. Life on land
01 natural sciences
Seral community
Temperate climate
Environmental science
Computers in Earth Sciences
Temperate rainforest
021101 geological & geomatics engineering
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Remote sensing
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 00344257
- Volume :
- 208
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Remote Sensing of Environment
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........73b8508c7c8f36f5990e5855a158a506
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2018.02.002