Maybe our experience with high-density (airborne) lidar in montane forest would be helpful; what point densities are you considering for terrestrial measurements?  

In general, you use the LiDAR measurements to determine stem density, dbh, and height, and then use established allometric relations or regression equations to estimate biomass.  There are many references - here are a few that may be useful to get you started:

1. Sampling and Mapping Forest Volume and Biomass Using Airborne LIDARs; Erik Næsset, Terje Gobakken, and Ross Nelson; 2006 Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Forest Inventory and Analysis Symposium.

2. http://www.academia.edu/2183619/Lidar_remote_sensing_for_forestry

3. LiDAR Forest Inventory with Single-Tree, Double-, and Single-Phase Procedures; Robert C. Parker and David L. Evans; International Journal of Forestry Research; Volume 2009, Article ID 864108, 6 pages; doi:10.1155/2009/864108

4 .Lefsky, Michael A., Warren B. Cohen, David J. Harding, Geoffrey G. Parkers, Steven A. Acker, and S. Thomas Gower.  2002.  Lidar Remote Sensing of Above-ground Biomass in Three Biomes.  Global Ecology & Biogeography, vol. 11, pp. 393-399.

Dear Hein Van Gils,

The attached flier will give complete details about our unit.

Best, ML

Mounir, this report on our project scanning AGB in hedges using terrestrial and aerial lidar might be of help:

http://www.epa.ie/pubs/reports/research/climate/ccrp-32-for-webFINAL.pdf

regards

Stuart

If you are working with well-known tree species or forests, you might have a look at allometric equations. I leave you this link to FAO's database:

http://www.fao.org/forestry/databases/allometric-equation/en/

Thinking the following could be of some interest:

Aubrecht, Christoph; Höfle, Bernhard; Hollaus, Markus; Köstl, M.; Steinnocher, Klaus; Wagner, W. (2010): Vertical Roughness Mapping - ALS Based Classification of the Vertical Vegetation Structure in Forested Areas. In: Proceedings of ISPRS TC VII Symposium: 100 Years ISPRS. ISPRS TC VII Symposium: 100 Years ISPRS. Vienna, Austria, 5 - 7 July 2010 (XXXVIII), S. 35–40.

Bremer, Magnus; Rutzinger, Martin; Wichmann, Volker (2013): Derivation of tree skeletons and error assessment using LiDAR point cloud data of varying quality. In: ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 80 (0), S. 39–50.

Hollaus, Markus; Aubrecht, Christoph; Höfle, Bernhard; Steinnocher, Klaus; Wagner, Wolfgang (2011): Roughness Mapping on Various Vertical Scales Based on Full-Waveform Airborne Laser Scanning Data. In: Remote Sensing 3 (3), S. 503–523.

Hello Mounir, there is a lot of literature but I think that one interesting is:;

Classifying species of individual trees by intensity and structure features derived from airborne laser scanner data

Por: Orka, Hans Ole; Naesset, Erik; Bollandsas, Ole Martin

REMOTE SENSING OF ENVIRONMENT Volumen: 113 Número: 6 Páginas: 1163-1174 Publication date:JUN 15 2009

Hi Mounir,

you should have into account that point densities for LIDAR and TLS (Terrestrial Laser Scannig) usually are quite different, not only TLS densities are higher but also they are more variable in space, TLS densities are close related to number of stations, distances to stations and the geometry of the network. I would recommend you to start analyzing this parameters and extracting some profiles of well-known areas to compare the real world with the differences between you Surface Model (including vegetation cover) and the DEM, this kind of exercise will guide you to the next step, which in my opinion would be establishing relationships between differences in height (of the two former surfaces) and real world cover.

Scanning the reference material supplied so far, I conclude that estimation of  tree heights in forest areas of say several km square is operational with both airborne and ground-based LIDAR instrumentation. Measuring DBH with LIDAR at this spatial scale seems still elusive. If my observation is correct, wood biomass cannot be assessed (yet) with LIDAR for large forest patches. For the time being we will continue to measure DBH of individual trees in the forest at the site of individual trees rather than from above or afar. Any evidence to the contrary would be most welcome.

Bienert, A., Hess, C., Maas, H.-G., von Oheimb, G. (2014): A voxel-based technique to estimate the volume of trees from terrestrial laser scanner data. Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci., XL-5, 101-106, doi:10.5194/isprsarchives-XL-5-101-2014, 2014.

Bienert, A., Schneider, D. (2013): Range image segmentation for tree detection in forest scans.  In: International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Antalya, Turkey, Vol. II-5/W2, pp. 49-54.

Schilling, A., Schmidt, A., Maas, H.-G. (2012): Tree Topology Representation from TLS Point Clouds Using Depth-First Search in Voxel Space. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, Vol. 78, No. 4, pp. 383-392.

Schilling, A.; Schmidt, A.; Maas, H.-G.(2011):

Automatic Tree Detection and Diameter Estimation in Terrestrial Laser Scanner Point Clouds. Proceedings of the 16th Computer Vision Winter Workshop. Mitterberg, Austria. 02-04 February, 2011

Hi Anette, By chance do you have PDF copies of the suggested articles? Thanks, Mounir

Hi Mounir,

Based on the fliers that you attached with, we are currently doing the same study in Royal Belum Forest in Malaysia. In which we are using only terrestrial laser scanner to quantify the volume of AGB in the particular forest. Based on my experience, you can direcly measure  the tree inventory once you finish scanning the area including DBH, tree heights etc. The problem occurs when you need to identify the tree species. The tree species is also important to estimate the AGB since every species has its own wood density. In our study, we bring in someone that experts on the tree species for identification purpose. Here are some of the articles that would help you regarding to your research.

Hi Mounir, links to the pdfs are attached.

http://tu-dresden.de/die_tu_dresden/fakultaeten/fakultaet_forst_geo_und_hydrowissenschaften/fachrichtung_geowissenschaften/ipf/photogrammetrie/publikationen/pubdocs/2013/2013_ISPRS_Bienert

http://www.int-arch-photogramm-remote-sens-spatial-inf-sci.net/XL-5/101/2014/isprsarchives-XL-5-101-2014.pdf

http://tu-dresden.de/die_tu_dresden/fakultaeten/fakultaet_forst_geo_und_hydrowissenschaften/fachrichtung_geowissenschaften/ipf/photogrammetrie/publikationen/pubdocs/2011/2011_Schilling_Calgary.pdf

http://tu-dresden.de/die_tu_dresden/fakultaeten/fakultaet_forst_geo_und_hydrowissenschaften/fachrichtung_geowissenschaften/ipf/photogrammetrie/publikationen/pubdocs/2011/2011_Schilling_CVWW_2011.pdf

Hi,

see also this: http://www.science20.com/news_articles/weighing_trees_now_with_lasers-151665

Regards,

There is an open source tool to build cylindrical tree models following the complete branching structure of the tree:

http://www.simpletree.uni-freiburg.de/index.html

you will find publication about the software here:

http://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/6/11/4245

Article SimpleTree —An Efficient Open Source Tool to Build Tree Mode...