Paper Info
Title
Estimation of Canopy Gap Fraction from Terrestrial Laser Scanner Using an Angular Grid to Take Advantage of the Full Data Spatial Resolution.
Abstract
This paper develops an algorithm to estimate vegetation canopy gap fraction (GF), taking advantage of the full Terrestrial Laser Scanner (TLS) resolution. After calculating the TLS angular resolution, the algorithm identifies the missing laser hits (gaps) within an angular grid in the azimuthal and zenithal directions. The algorithm was first tested on angular data simulations with random (R), cluster (C) and random and cluster together (RC) gap pattern distributions. Noise introduced in the simulations as a percentage of the resolution accounted for the effect of TLS angular uncertainty. The algorithm performs accurately if angular noise is <6% of the angular resolution. To assess the impact of the change in projection, this study compared these GF estimates from angular grid simulations to their transformation into simulated hemispherical images (SHI). SHI with C patterns perform accurately, but R and RC patterns underestimate GF, especially for GF values below 0.6. The SHI performance to estimate GF was always far below the algorithm developed here with the angular grid simulations. When applied to actual TLS data acquired over individual Quercus ilex L. trees, the algorithm rendered a GF between 0.26 and 0.40. TLS had an angular noise <6%. Converting the angular grid into simulated HI (TLS-SHI) provided a better agreement with actual HI acquired in the same location as the TLS data, since they are in the same projection. The TLS-SHI underestimated GF by an average of 4% compared to HI. HI and TLS-SHI presented 14% and 17% lower values than the GF calculated from the angular grids, respectively. Nevertheless, the results from the simulations indicate that the algorithm based on the angular grid should be closer to the actual GF of the tree canopy.
Year
DOI
Venue
2020
10.3390/rs12101596
REMOTE SENSING
Keywords
DocType
Volume
terrestrial laser scanner,gap fraction,leaf area index,angular grid,hemispherical images
Journal
12
Issue
Citations 
PageRank 
10
0
0.34
References 
Authors
0
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
John Gajardo100.68
David Riaño201.01
Mariano García3226.69
Javier Salas400.68
M. Pilar Martín55010.55