The intensity information from terrestrial laser scanners (TLS) has become an important object of study in recent years, and there are an increasing number of applications that would benefit from the ...addition of calibrated intensity data to the topographic information. In this paper, we study the range and incidence angle effects on the intensity measurements and search for practical correction methods for different TLS instruments and targets. We find that the range (distance) effect is strongly dominated by instrumental factors, whereas the incidence angle effect is mainly caused by the target surface properties. Correction for both effects is possible, but more studies are needed for physical interpretation and more efficient use of intensity data for target characterization.
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Accurate terrain models are a crucial component of studies of river channel evolution. In this paper we describe a new methodology for creating high-resolution seamless digital terrain models (DTM) ...of river channels and their floodplains. We combine mobile laser scanning and low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) photography-based methods for creating both a digital bathymetric model of the inundated river channel and a DTM of a point bar of a meandering sub-arctic river. We evaluate mobile laser scanning and UAV-based photogrammetry point clouds against terrestrial laser scanning and combine these data with an optical bathymetric model to create a seamless DTM of two different measurement periods. Using this multi-temporal seamless data, we calculate a DTM of difference that allows a change detection of the meander bend over a one-year period.
•Preliminary study of chlorophyll estimation using hyperspectral LiDAR (HSL).•HSL produces point clouds with spectral information for every point.•Estimation tested using empirical vegetation indices ...and conifer shoots.•HSL enables nondestructive 3D chlorophyll estimation within vegetation canopy.
We propose an empirical method for nondestructive estimation of chlorophyll in tree canopies. The first prototype of a full waveform hyperspectral LiDAR instrument has been developed by the Finnish Geodetic Institute (FGI). The instrument efficiently combines the benefits of passive and active remote sensing sensors. It is able to produce 3D point clouds with spectral information included for every point, which offers great potential in the field of environmental remote sensing.
The investigation was conducted by using chlorophyll sensitive vegetation indices applied to hyperspectral LiDAR data and testing their performance in chlorophyll estimation. The amount of chlorophyll in vegetation is an important indicator of photosynthetic capacity and stress, and thus important for monitoring of forest condition and carbon sequestration on Earth.
Performance of chlorophyll estimation was evaluated for 27 published vegetation indices applied to waveform LiDAR collected from ten Scots pine shoots. Reference data were collected by laboratory chlorophyll concentration analysis. The performance of the indices in chlorophyll estimation was determined by linear regression and leave-one-out cross-validation.
The chlorophyll estimates derived from hyperspectral LiDAR linearly correlate with the laboratory analyzed chlorophyll concentrations, and they are able to represent a range of chlorophyll concentrations in Scots pine shoots (R2=0.88, RMSE=0.10mg/g). Furthermore, they are insensitive to measurement scale as nearly the same values of vegetation indices were measured in natural setting while scanning the whole canopy and from clipped shoots re-measured with hyperspectral LiDAR in laboratory. The results indicate that the hyperspectral LiDAR instrument has the potential to estimate vegetation biochemical parameters such as the chlorophyll concentration. The instrument holds much potential in various environmental applications and provides a significant improvement over single wavelength LiDAR or passive optical systems for environmental remote sensing.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
The intensity data produced by terrestrial laser scanners has become a topic of increasing interest in the remote sensing community. We present a case study of radiometric calibration for two ...phase-shift continuous wave (CW) terrestrial scanners and discuss some major issues in correcting and applying the intensity data, and a practical calibration scheme based on external reference targets. There are differences in the operation of detectors of different (although similar type) instruments, and the detector effects must be known in order to calibrate the intensity data into values representing the target reflectance. It is, therefore, important that the effects of distance and target reflectance on the recorded intensity are carefully studied before using the intensity data from any terrestrial laser scanner.
We present a new application of terrestrial laser scanning and mathematical modelling for the quantitative change detection of tree biomass, volume, and structure. We investigate the feasibility of ...the approach with two case studies on trees, assess the accuracy with laboratory reference measurements, and identify the main sources of error, and the ways to mitigate their effect on the results. We show that the changes in the tree branching structure can be reproduced with about ±10% accuracy. As the current biomass detection is based on destructive sampling, and the change detection is based on empirical models, our approach provides a non-destructive tool for monitoring important forest characteristics without laborious biomass sampling. The efficiency of the approach enables the repeating of these measurements over time for a large number of samples, providing a fast and effective means for monitoring forest growth, mortality, and biomass in 3D.
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The objective of this study was to obtain up-to-date information on land use and to identify long term changes in land use, especially rice, aquaculture and other crops in Ben Tre and Tra Vinh ...provinces in Vietnam's Mekong Delta. Long-term changes in land-use of the study area have not been studied using long time series of SAR and optical Earth observation (EO) data before. EO data from 1979-2012 was used: ENVISAT ASAR Wide Swath Mode, SPOT and Landsat imagery. An unsupervised ISODATA classification was performed on multitemporal SAR images. The results were validated using ground truth data. Using the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery maps for 2005, 2009 and 2011 were obtained. Different rice crops, aquaculture and fruit trees could be distinguished with an overall accuracy of 80%. Using available optical imagery the time series was extended from 2005 to 1979. Long-term decrease in the rice acreage and increase in the aquaculture acreage could be detected.
We have studied the possibility of calibrating airborne laser scanning (ALS) intensity data, using land targets typically available in urban areas. For this purpose, a test area around Espoonlahti ...Harbor, Espoo, Finland, for which a long time series of ALS campaigns is available, was selected. Different target samples (beach sand, concrete, asphalt, different types of gravel) were collected and measured in the laboratory. Using tarps, which have certain backscattering properties, the natural samples were calibrated and studied, taking into account the atmospheric effect, incidence angle and flying height. Using data from different flights and altitudes, a time series for the natural samples was generated. Studying the stability of the samples, we could obtain information on the most ideal types of natural targets for ALS radiometric calibration. Using the selected natural samples as reference, the ALS points of typical land targets were calibrated again and examined. Results showed the need for more accurate ground reference data, before using natural samples in ALS intensity data calibration. Also, the NIR camera-based field system was used for collecting ground reference data. This system proved to be a good means for collecting in situ reference data, especially for targets with inhomogeneous surface reflection properties.
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We apply quantitative structure modelling to produce detailed information on branch-level metrics in trees. Particularly we are interested in the branch size distribution, by which we mean the total ...volume of branch parts distributed over the diameter classes of the parts. We investigate the possibility of predicting tree branch size distributions for trees in similar growing conditions. The quantitative structure model enables for the first time the comparisons of structure between a large number of trees. We found that the branch size distribution is similar for trees of different height in similar growing conditions. The results suggest that tree height could be used to estimate branch size distribution in areas with similar growing conditions and topography.
Radiometric calibration of airborne laser scanning (ALS) intensity data aims at retrieving a value related to the target scattering properties, which is independent on the instrument or flight ...parameters. The aim of a calibration procedure is also to be able to compare results from different flights and instruments, but practical applications are sparsely available, and the performance of calibration methods for this purpose needs to be further assessed. We have studied the radiometric calibration with data from three separate flights and two different instruments using external calibration targets. We find that the intensity data from different flights and instruments can be compared to each other only after a radiometric calibration process using separate calibration targets carefully selected for each flight. The calibration is also necessary for target classification purposes, such as separating vegetation from sand using intensity data from different flights. The classification results are meaningful only for calibrated intensity data.
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Open geospatial data sources provide opportunities for low cost 3D scene reconstruction. In this study, based on a sparse airborne laser scanning (ALS) point cloud (0.8 points/m2) obtained from open ...source databases, a building reconstruction pipeline for CAD building models was developed. The pipeline includes voxel-based roof patch segmentation, extraction of the key-points representing the roof patch outline, step edge identification and adjustment, and CAD building model generation. The advantages of our method lie in generating CAD building models without the step of enforcing the edges to be parallel or building regularization. Furthermore, although it has been challenging to use sparse datasets for 3D building reconstruction, our result demonstrates the great potential in such applications. In this paper, we also investigated the applicability of open geospatial datasets for 3D road detection and reconstruction. Road central lines were acquired from an open source 2D topographic database. ALS data were utilized to obtain the height and width of the road. A constrained search method (CSM) was developed for road width detection. The CSM method was conducted by splitting a given road into patches according to height and direction criteria. The road edges were detected patch by patch. The road width was determined by the average distance from the edge points to the central line. As a result, 3D roads were reconstructed from ALS and a topographic database.
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