Forest Ground Observations through Terrestrial Point Clouds
A special issue of Forests (ISSN 1999-4907).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2016) | Viewed by 166853
Special Issue Editors
Interests: laser scanning (airborne, mobile and terrestrial); 3D remote sensing; individual tree detection; virtual forests
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: geodesy and surveying; geoinformatics (GIS); remote sensing; laser scanning; terrestrial laser scanning; mobile laser scanning; 3D modelling; forest inventory
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: remote sensing; laser scanning; vegetation phenology; carbon and water cycles; temporal development
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Ground observations of the forest environment collect tree-related information that are used as fundamental inputs in various applications, such as forest monitoring, inventories, conservation, to name only a few. Forest ground measurements are conventionally carried out though destructive and/or non-destructive manual measurements, which are widely recognized as expensive and labor-intensive. Consequently, the amount of ground observations made in a particular application is typically very limited, often much less than what is needed.
More recently, terrestrial point clouds, which consist of millions/billions of three-dimensional points reflected from objects collected by, e.g., laser scanning, have become available for collecting forest ground data. By applying sophisticated algorithms, many tree attributes can be extracted at both individual-tree- and plot-levels, such as diameter-at-breast-height (DBH), leaf area index (LAI), stem volume, and biomass. The last decade has witnessed great changes in the research and acceptance of terrestrial point clouds as a forest ground observation tool, where innovative algorithms, applications, and hardware have played key roles in these rapid developments.
In this context, this Special Issue tries to document state-of-the-art developments in forest ground observations through terrestrial point clouds in the form of innovative papers concerning research, development, and operational use. Prospective authors are invited to contribute to this Special Issue of Forests by submitting manuscripts of their latest research on related topics. Practice-orientated papers are preferred. Reviews are also welcomed. Topics may be from, but not limited to:
• New sources of terrestrial point clouds in forest environments
• New methods in information extraction in forest environments, using terrestrial point clouds, e.g., automated feature extraction and object recognition from terrestrial and mobile point clouds
• New applications and concepts of using terrestrial point clouds in areas, e.g., of forest inventory, forest ecology, and biodiversity.
• Techniques for the fusion of terrestrial point cloud data with data from other sensors, e.g., airborne sensors and satellite data
• Accuracy and performance evaluations
Submitted manuscripts must be original contributions, not ones previously published or submitted to other journals. Papers published or submitted for publication in conference proceedings may be considered, provided that they are considerably extended and improved. Papers must follow the instructions for authors at https://www.mdpi.com/journal/forests/instructions.
Prof. Dr. Juha Hyyppä
Dr. Xinlian Liang
Guest Editor
Dr.Eetu Puttonen
Co-Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Forests is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- point cloud
- terrestrial laser scanning/ground-based LiDAR
- mobile laser scanning
- airborne laser scanning
- volume/biomass
- leaf area index
- canopy structure
- modelling forest stand structure
- modelling of forests
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