Category Archives: DTM

LASmoons: Maeva Dang

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Maeva Dang (recipient of three LASmoons)
Industrial Building and interdisciplinary Planning, Faculty of Civil Engineering
Vienna University of Technology, AUSTRIA

Background:
After centuries of urbanization and industrialization the green landscape of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil must be regenerated. The forests and other green areas, providers of ecosystem services, are fragmented and surrounded by dense urban occupation [1]. The loss of vegetation in the city reduces the amount of cooling and increases the urban heat islands effect. The metropolis also has a chronic problem with floods as a result of the lack of sustainable planning in urban areas of low permeability. A well-designed green infrastructure system is highly needed, since it would help the city to mitigate the negative effects of its urbanization and to be more resilient to environmental changes [2]. Intensive green roofs provide a large range of benefits from enhancing biodiversity in the city to reducing flood risks and mitigating the urban heat islands effect. The present research aims to quantitatively and accurately assess the intensive greening potential of the roof landscape of Rio de Janeiro based on LIDAR data.

A view of the roof landscape of the Urca district. Rio de Janeiro has high contrasts of forests and dense urban environments.

Goal:
The LAStools software will be used to check the quality of the data and create a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) and Digital Surface Model (DSM) for the city of Rio de Janeiro. The goal of the study is to identify the existing flat roof surfaces suitable for intensive greening (i.e. that have a slope between 0 and 5 degrees). The results will be provided for free to the public.

Data:
+ Airborne LiDAR data provided by the City hall of Rio de Janeiro, Instituto Municipal de Urbanismo Pereira Passos (IPP)
+ Average pulse density 2 pulses per square meter
+ Sensor System: Leica ALS60

LAStools processing:
1) check the quality of the LiDAR data [lasinfo, lasoverlap, lasgrid]
2) classify into ground and non-ground points using tile-based processing [lastile, lasground]
3) remove low and high outliers [lasheight, lasnoise]
4) identify buildings within the study area [lasclassify]
5) normalize LiDAR heights [lasheight]
6) generate DTM and DSM [las2dem, lasgrid]

References:
[1] Herzog C. (2012). Connecting the wonderful Landscapes of Rio de Janeiro. Available online . Accessed on 07/06/18.
[2] European Commission (2011). Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the
Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions: Our life insurance, our natural capital: an EU
biodiversity strategy to 2020. Available online. Accessed on 07/06/18.

LASmoons: Alex S. Olpenda

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Alex S. Olpenda (recipient of three LASmoons)
Department of Geomatics and Spatial Planning, Faculty of Forestry
Warsaw University of Life Sciences, POLAND

Background:
The Bialowieza Forest is a trans-boundary property along the borders of Poland and Belarus consisting of diverse Central European lowland forest covering a total area of 141,885 hectares. Enlisted as one of the world’s biosphere reserves and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Bialowieza Forest conserves a complex ecosystem that supports vast wildlife including at least 250 species of birds and more than 50 mammals such as wolf, moose, lynx and the largest free-roaming population of the forest’s iconic species, the European bison [1]. The area is also significantly rich in dead wood which becomes a home for countless species of mushrooms, mold, bacteria and insects of which many of them are endangered of extinction [2]. Another factor, aside from soil type, that impacts the species of plant communities growing in the area is humidity [3] which can be considered as a function of solar radiation. Understanding the interactions and dynamics of these elements within the environment is vital for proper management and conservation practices. Sunlight below canopies is a driving force that affects the growth and survival of both fauna and flora directly and indirectly. Measurement and monitoring of this variable is crucial.

The European bison  (image credit to Frederic Demeuse).

Goal:
Remote sensing technology can describe the light condition inside the forest with relatively high spatial and temporal resolutions at large scale. The goal of this research is to develop a predictive model to estimate sub-canopy light condition of Bialowieza Forest inside Poland’s territory using LiDAR data. Aside from common metrics based on heights and intensities, extraction of selected metrics known to infer transmitted light are also to be done. Returns that belong or are close to the ground are a good substitute for sun-rays that reach the forest floor while vegetation-classified returns could be assumed as the ones impeding the light. Relationships between these metrics and to both direct and diffuse sunlight derived from hemispherical photographs will be explored. Furthermore, multiple regression shall then be conducted between the parameters. Previous similar studies have been done successfully but mostly in homogeneous forest. The task might pose a challenge as Bialowieza Forest is a mixture of conifers and broad-leaved trees.

Location map of the study site with 100 random sample plots.

Data:
+ 2015 ALS data set obtained using full waveform sensor (Riegl LMS-Q680i)
+ discrete point clouds (average pulse density: 6 points/m²)
+ 134 flightlines with 40% overlap
+ forest inventory data (100 circular plots, 12.62 m radius)
+ colored hemispherical photographs
All of this data is provided by the Forest Research Institute through the ForBioSensing project.

LAStools processing:
1) data quality checking [lasinfo, lasoverlap, lasgrid, lasreturn]
2) merge and clip the LAZ files [las2las]
3) classify ground and non-ground points [lasground]
4) remove low and high outliers [lasheight, lasnoise]
5) create a normalized point cloud [lasheight]
6) compute forestry metrics for each plot [lascanopy]

References:
[1] UNESCO. World Heritage List. Available online (accessed on 2 October 2017).
[2] Polish Tourism Organization. Official Travel Website. Available online (accessed on 3 October 2017).
[3] Bialowieza National Park. Available online (accessed on 3 October 2017).

New Step-by-Step Tutorial for Velodyne Drone LiDAR from Snoopy by LidarUSA

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The folks from Harris Aerial gave us LiDAR data from a test-flight of one of their drones, the Carrier H4 Hybrid HE (with a 5kg maximum payload and a retail price of US$ 28,000), carrying a Snoopy A series LiDAR system from LidarUSA in the countryside near Huntsville, Alabama. The laser scanner used by the Snoopy A series is a Velodyne HDL 32E that has 32 different laser/detector pairs that fire in succession to scan up to 700,000 points per second within a range of 1 to 70 meters. You can download the raw LiDAR file from the 80 second test flight here. As always, the first thing we do is to visualize the file with lasview and to generate a textual report of its contents with lasinfo.

lasview -i Velodyne001.laz -set_min_max 680 750

It becomes obvious that the drone must have scanned parts of itself (probably the landing gear) during the flight and we exploit this fact in the later processing. The information which of the 32 lasers was collecting which point is stored into the ‘point source ID’ field which is usually used for the flightline information. This results in a psychedelic look in lasview as those 32 different numbers get mapped to the 8 different colors that lasview uses for distinguishing flightlines.

In the point cloud colored by elevation we see that the drone must have scanned itself during flight.
The point cloud colored by intensity gives a clearer picture of what is on the ground.
The point cloud colored by point source ID looks psychedelic.

The lasinfo report we generate computes the average point density with ‘-cd’ and includes histograms for a number of point attributes, namely for ‘user data’, ‘intensity’, ‘point source ID’, ‘GPS time’, and ‘scan angle rank’.

lasinfo -i Velodyne001.laz ^
        -cd ^
        -histo user_data 1 ^
        -histo point_source 1 ^
        -histo intensity 16 ^
        -histo gps_time 1 ^
        -histo scan_angle_rank 5 ^
        -odir quality -odix _info -otxt

You can download the resulting report here and it will tell you that the information which of the 32 lasers was collecting which point was stored both into the ‘user data’ field and into the ‘point source ID’ field. The warnings you see below have to do with the fact that the double-precision bounding box stored in the LAS header was populated with numbers that have many more decimal digits than the coordinates in the file, which only have millimeter (or millifeet) resolution as all three scale factors are 0.001 (meaning three decimal digits).

WARNING: stored resolution of min_x not compatible with x_offset and x_scale_factor: 2171988.6475160527
WARNING: stored resolution of min_y not compatible with y_offset and y_scale_factor: 1622812.606925504
WARNING: stored resolution of min_z not compatible with z_offset and z_scale_factor: 666.63504345017589
WARNING: stored resolution of max_x not compatible with x_offset and x_scale_factor: 2172938.973065129
WARNING: stored resolution of max_y not compatible with y_offset and y_scale_factor: 1623607.5209975131
WARNING: stored resolution of max_z not compatible with z_offset and z_scale_factor: 1053.092674726669

Both the “return number” and the “number of returns” attribute of every points in the file is 2. This makes it appear as if the file would only contain the last returns of those laser shots that produced two returns. However, as the Velodyne HDL 32E only produces one return per shot we can safely conclude that those numbers should all be 1 instead of 2 and that this is just a small bug in the export software. We can easily fix this with las2las.

reporting minimum and maximum for all LAS point record entries ...
[...]
 return_number 2 2
 number_of_returns 2 2
[...]

The lasinfo report lacks information about the coordinate reference system as there is no VLR that stores projection information. Harris Aerial could not help us other than telling us that the scan was near Huntsville, Alamaba. Measuring certain distances in the scene like the height of the house or the tree suggests that both horizontal and vertical units are in feet, or rather in US survey feet. After some experimenting we find that using EPSG 26930 for NAD83 Alabama West but forcing the default horizontal units from meters to US survey feet gives a result that aligns well with high-resolution Google Earth imagery as you can see below:

lasgrid -i flightline1.laz ^
        -i flightline2.laz ^
        -merged ^
        -epsg 26930 -survey_feet ^
        -step 1 -highest ^
        -false -set_min_max 680 750 ^
        -o testing26930usft.png

Using EPSG code 26930 but with US survey feet instead of meters results in nice alignment with GE imagery.

We use the fact that the drone has scanned itself to extract an (approximate) trajectory by isolating those LiDAR returns that have hit the drone. Via a visual check with lasview (by hovering with the cursor over the lowest drone hits and pressing hotkey ‘i’) we determine that the lowest drone hits are all above 719 feet. We use two calls to las2las to split the point cloud vertically. In the same call we also change the resolution from three to two decimal digits, fix the return number issue, and add the missing geo-referencing information:

las2las -i Velodyne001.laz ^
        -rescale 0.01 0.01 0.01 ^
        -epsg 26930 -survey_feet -elevation_survey_feet ^
        -set_return_number 1 ^
        -set_number_of_returns 1 ^
        -keep_z_above 719 ^
        -odix _above719 -olaz

las2las -i Velodyne001.laz ^
        -rescale 0.01 0.01 0.01 ^
        -epsg 26930 -survey_feet -elevation_survey_feet ^
        -set_return_number 1 ^
        -set_number_of_returns 1 ^
        -keep_z_below 719 ^
        -odix _below719 -olaz

We then use the manual editing capabilities of lasview to change the classifications of the LiDAR points that correspond to drone hits from 1 to 12, which is illustrated by the series of screen shots below.

lasview -i Velodyne001_above719.laz
Right in lasview clicking opens a pop-up menu with an option to edit classifications.
We draw a polygon around the points that are from the drone hitting itself.
By pressing the hotkey ‘r’ we register the changes.
Maybe a few too many points were classified as 12 so we put them back into classification 1.
We draw another polygon.
And press the hotkey ‘r’ again to register the changes.
Here are two more points that need to go back to classification 1.
Once we are satisfied we hold the CRTL button down and press hotkey ‘s’ to save the changes as a LASlayers LAY file.

The workflow illustrated above results in a tiny LAY file that is part of the LASlayers functionality of LAStools. It only encodes the few changes in classifications that we’ve made to the LAZ file without re-writing those parts that have not changed. Those interested may use laslayers to inspect the structure of the LAY file:

laslayers -i Velodyne001_above719.laz

We can apply the LAY file on-the-fly with the ‘-ilay’ option, for example, when running lasview:

lasview -i Velodyne001_above719.laz -ilay

To separate the drone-hit trajectory from the remaining points we run lassplit with the ‘-ilay’ option and request to split by classification with this command line:

lassplit -i Velodyne001_above719.laz -ilay ^
         -by_classification -digits 3 ^
         -olaz

This gives us two new files with the three-digit appendices ‘_001’ and ‘_012’. The latter one contains those points we marked as being part of the trajectory. We now want to use lasview to – visually – find a good moment in time where to split the trajectory into multiple flightlines. The lasinfo report tells us that the GPS time stamps are in the range from 418,519 to 418,602. In order to use the same trick as we did in our recent article on processing LiDAR data from the Hovermap Drone, where we mapped the GPS time to the intensity for querying it via lasview, we first need to subtract a large number from the GPS time stamps to bring them into a suitable range that fits the intensity field as done here.

lasview -i Velodyne001_above719_012.laz ^
        -translate_gps_time -418000 ^
        -bin_gps_time_into_intensity 1
        -steps 5000

The ‘-steps 5000’ argument makes for a slower playback (press ‘p’ to repeat) to better follow the trajectory.

Hovering with the mouse over a point that – visually – seems to be one of the turning points of the drone and pressing ‘i’ on the keyboard shows an intensity value of 548 which corresponds to the GPS time stamp 418548, which we then use to split the LiDAR point cloud (without the trajectory) into two flightlines:

las2las -i Velodyne001_below719.laz ^
        -i Velodyne001_above719_001.laz ^
        -merged ^
        -keep_gps_time_below 418548 ^
        -o flightline1.laz

las2las -i Velodyne001_below719.laz ^
        -i Velodyne001_above719_001.laz ^
        -merged ^
        -keep_gps_time_above 418548 ^
        -o flightline2.laz

Next we use lasoverlap to check how well the LiDAR points from the flight out and the flight back align vertically. This tool computes the difference of the lowest points for each square foot covered by both flightlines. Differences of less than a quarter of a foot are mapped to white, differences of more than half a foot are mapped to saturated red or blue depending on whether the difference is positive or negative:

lasoverlap -i flightline1.laz ^
           -i flightline2.laz ^
           -faf ^
           -min_diff 0.25 -max_diff 0.50 -step 1 ^
           -odir quality -o overlap_025_050.png

We then use a new feature of the LAStools GUI (as of version 180429) to closer inspect larger red or blue areas. We want to use lasmerge and clip out any region that looks suspect for closer examination with lasview. We start the tool in the GUI mode with the ‘-gui’ command and the two flightlines pre-loaded. Using the new PNG overlay roll-out on the left we add the ‘overlap_025_050_diff.png’ image from the quality folder created in the last step and clip out three areas.

lasmerge -i flightline1.laz -i flightline2.laz -gui
Clipping a 100 foot by 5 foot area from where the difference image is blue.
Clipping a 100 foot by 5 foot area from where the difference image is red.
Clipping a 100 foot by 20 foot area from where the difference image is both blue and red.

You can also clip out these three areas using the command lines below:

lasmerge -i flightline1.laz -i flightline2.laz ^
         -faf ^
         -inside 2172500 1623160 2172600 1623165 ^
         -o clip2500_3160_100x005.laz

lasmerge -i flightline1.laz -i flightline2.laz ^
         -faf ^
         -inside 2172450 1623450 2172550 1623455 ^
         -o clip2450_3450_100x005.laz

lasmerge -i flightline1.laz -i flightline2.laz ^
         -faf ^
         -inside 2172430 1623290 2172530 1623310 ^
         -o clip2430_3290_100x020.laz

A closer inspection of the three cut out slices explains the red and blue areas in the difference image created by lasoverlap. We find a small systematic error in two of the slices. In slice ‘clip2500_3160_100x005.laz‘ the green points from flightline 1 are on average slightly higher than the red points from flightline 2. Vice-versa in slice ‘clip2450_3450_100x005.laz‘ the green points from flightline 1 are on average slightly lower than the red points from flightline 2. However, the error is less than half a foot and only happens near the edges of the flightlines. Given that our surfaces are expected to be “fluffy” anyways (as is typical for Velodyne LiDAR systems), we accept these differences and continue processing.

Zooming in on the 5 foot slice ‘clip2500_3160_100x005.laz’ colored by flightline.
There is a small shift between the two flightlines. This is flightline 1.
There is a small shift between the two flightlines. This is flightline 2.
Zooming in on the 5 foot slice ‘clip2450_3450_100x005.laz’ colored by flightline. The top and button representations have a half foot drop/rise line attached to each return to get a sense of scale.

The strong red and blue colors in the center of the difference image created by lasoverlap is easily explained by looking at slice ‘clip2430_3290_100x020.laz‘. The scanner was “looking” under a gazebo-like open roof structure from two different directions and therefore always seeing parts of the floor in one flightline that were obscured by the roof in the other.

The points from the 20 foot slice ‘clip2430_3290_100x020.laz’ colored by flightline.
The reason for the big difference is that during flightline 1 the scanner “looks” under the roof from the right.
Whereas during flightline 2 the scanner “looks” under the roof from the left.

While working with this data we’ve also implemented a new feature for lastrack that computes the 3D distance between LiDAR points and the trajectory and allows storing the result as an additional per point attribute with extra bytes. Those can then be visualized with lasgrid. Here an example:

lastrack -i flightline1.laz ^
         -i flightline2.laz ^
         -track Velodyne001_above719_012.laz ^
         -store_xyz_range_as_extra_bytes ^
         -odix _xyz_range -olaz ^
         =cores 2

lasgrid -i flightline*_xyz_range.laz -merged ^
        -drop_attribute_below 0 1 ^
        -attribute0 -lowest ^
        -false -set_min_max 20 200 ^
        -o quality/closest_xyz_range_020ft_200ft.png

lasgrid -i flightline*_xyz_range.laz -merged ^
        -drop_attribute_below 0 1 ^
        -attribute0 -highest ^
        -false -set_min_max 30 300 ^
        -o quality/farthest_xyz_range_030ft_300ft.png
Visualization of the closest distance of any return from the trajectory for every square foot with 20 ft (or less) being mapped to blue and 200ft (or more) being mapped to red.
Visualization of the farthest distance of any return from the trajectory for every square foot with 30 ft (or less) being mapped to blue and 300ft (or more) being mapped to red.

Below the complete processing pipeline for creating a median ground model from the “fluffy” Velodyne LiDAR data that results in the hillshaded DTM shown here. The workflow is similar to those we have developed in earlier blog posts for Velodyne Puck based systems like the Hovermap and the Yellowscan.

Hillshaded DTM with a resolution of 1 foot generated via a median ground computation by the LAStools processing pipeline detailed below.

lastile -i flightline1.laz ^
        -i flightline2.laz ^
        -faf ^
        -tile_size 250 -buffer 25 -flag_as_withheld ^
        -odir tiles_raw -o somer.laz

lasnoise -i tiles_raw\*.laz ^
         -step_xy 2 -step 1 -isolated 9 ^
         -odir tiles_denoised -olaz ^
          -cores 4

lasthin -i tiles_denoised\*.laz ^
        -ignore_class 7 ^
        -step 1 -percentile 0.05 10 -classify_as 8 ^
        -odir tiles_thinned_1_foot -olaz ^
        -cores 4

lasthin -i tiles_thinned_1_foot\*.laz ^
        -ignore_class 7 ^
        -step 2 -percentile 0.05 10 -classify_as 8 ^
        -odir tiles_thinned_2_foot -olaz ^
        -cores 4

lasthin -i tiles_thinned_2_foot\*.laz ^
        -ignore_class 7 ^
        -step 4 -percentile 0.05 10 -classify_as 8 ^
        -odir tiles_thinned_4_foot -olaz ^
        -cores 4

lasthin -i tiles_thinned_4_foot\*.laz ^
        -ignore_class 7 ^
        -step 8 -percentile 0.05 10 -classify_as 8 ^
        -odir tiles_thinned_8_foot -olaz ^
        -cores 4

lasground -i tiles_thinned_8_foot\*.laz ^
          -ignore_class 1 7 ^
          -town -extra_fine ^
          -odir tiles_ground_lowest -olaz ^
          -cores 4

lasheight -i tiles_ground_lowest\*.laz ^
          -classify_between -0.05 0.5 6 ^
          -odir tiles_ground_thick -olaz ^
          -cores 4

lasthin -i tiles_ground_thick\*.laz ^
        -ignore_class 1 7 ^
        -step 1 -percentile 0.5 -classify_as 2 ^
        -odir tiles_ground_median -olaz ^
        -cores 4

las2dem -i tiles_ground_median\*.laz ^
        -keep_class 2 ^
        -step 1 -use_tile_bb ^
        -odir tiles_dtm -obil ^
        -cores 4

blast2dem -i tiles_dtm\*.bil -merged ^
          -step 1 -hillshade ^
          -o dtm_hillshaded.png

We thank Harris Aerial for sharing this LiDAR data set with us flown by their Carrier H4 Hybrid HE drone carrying a Snoopy A series LiDAR system from LidarUSA.

LASmoons: Martin Buchauer

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Martin Buchauer (recipient of three LASmoons)
Cartography & Geomedia Technology
University of Applied Science Munich, GERMANY

Background:
Salt marsh areas provide numerous services such as natural flood defenses, carbon sequestration, agricultural services, and are a valuable coastal habitat for flora, fauna and humans. However, they are not only threatened by the constant rise of sea levels caused by global warming but also by human settlement in coastal areas. A sensible local coastal development is important as it may help to support the development and progression of stressed salt marshes.

Looking South you can see the salt marsh area next to a famous golf course with St Andrews in the background.

Goal:

This research aims to visualize and extract vegetation metrics as well as the temporal analysis of four salt marsh data sets which are derived from terrestrial laser scanning. Located at the South and North shore of the Eden Estuary near St Andrews, Scotland, the scans were acquired in the summer and winter of 2016. Ground based laser scanning is an ideal method of fully reconstructing vegetation structures as well as having the ability to retrieve meaningful metrics such as height, area, and vegetation density. Although this technology has frequently been applied in the area of forestry, its application to salt marsh areas has not yet fully explored.

Data:
+ TLS data acquired with a Leica HDS6100 (average density of 38000 points/m²)
+ ground control points (field data)

LAStools processing:
1) check the quality of the LiDAR data [lasinfo, lasoverlap, lasgrid]
2) merge and retile the original data with buffers [lastile]
3) classify point clouds into ground and non-ground [lasthin, lasground]
4) create digital terrain (DTM) and digital surface models (DSM) [lasthin, las2dem, blast2dem]

First Look with LAStools at LiDAR from Hovermap Drone by CSIRO

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Last December we had a chance to visit the team of Dr. Stefan Hrabar at CSIRO in Pullenvale near Brisbane who work on a drone LiDAR system called Hovermap. This SLAM-based system is mainly developed for the purpose of autonomous flight and exploration of GPS-denied environments such as buildings, mines and tunnels. But as the SLAM algorithm continuously self-registers the scan lines it produces a LiDAR point cloud that in itself is a nice product. We started our visit with a short test flight around the on-site tower. You can download the LiDAR data and the drone trajectory of this little survey here:

The Hovermap system is based on the Velodyne Puck Lite (VLP-16) that is much cheaper and more light-weight than many other LiDAR systems. One interesting tidbit in the Hovermap setup is that the scanner is installed such that the entire Puck is constantly rotating as you can see in this video. But  the Velodyne Puck is also known to produce somewhat “fluffy” surfaces with a thickness of a few centimeters. In a previous blog post with data from the YellowScan Surveyor system (that is also based on the Puck) we used a “median ground” surface to deal with the “fluff”. In the following we will have a look at the LiDAR data produced by Hovermap and how to process it with LAStools.

LiDAR data of CSIRO tower acquired during test flight of Hovermap system.

As always we start with a lasinfo report that computes the average density ‘-cd’ and histograms for the intensity and the GPS time:

lasinfo -i CSIRO_Tower\results.laz ^
        -cd ^
        -histo intensity 16 -histo gps_time 2 ^
        -odir CSIRO_Tower\quality -odix _info -otxt

A few excerpts of the resulting lasinfo report that you can download here are below:

lasinfo (180409) report for 'CSIRO_Tower\results.laz'
[...]
 number of point records: 16668904
 number of points by return: 0 0 0 0 0
 scale factor x y z: 0.0001 0.0001 0.0001
 offset x y z: -5.919576153930379 22.785394470724583 9.535698734939086
 min x y z: -138.6437 -125.2552 -34.1510
 max x y z: 126.8046 170.8260 53.2224
WARNING: full resolution of min_x not compatible with x_offset and x_scale_factor: -138.64370561381907
WARNING: full resolution of min_y not compatible with y_offset and y_scale_factor: -125.25518631070418
WARNING: full resolution of min_z not compatible with z_offset and z_scale_factor: -34.150966206894068
WARNING: full resolution of max_x not compatible with x_offset and x_scale_factor: 126.80455330595831
WARNING: full resolution of max_y not compatible with y_offset and y_scale_factor: 170.82597525215334
WARNING: full resolution of max_z not compatible with z_offset and z_scale_factor: -34.150966206894068
[...]
 gps_time 121.288045 302.983110
WARNING: 2 points outside of header bounding box
[...]
covered area in square units/kilounits: 51576/0.05
point density: all returns 323.19 last only 318.40 (per square units)
 spacing: all returns 0.06 last only 0.06 (in units)
WARNING: for return 1 real number of points by return is 16424496 but header entry was not set.
WARNING: for return 2 real number of points by return is 244408 but header entry was not set.
[...]
real max z larger than header max z by 0.000035
real min z smaller than header min z by 0.000035
[...]

Most of these warnings have to do with poorly chosen offset values in the LAS header that have many decimal digits instead of being nice round numbers. The points are stored with sub-millimeter resolution (scale factors of 0.0001) which is unnecessarily precise for a UAV flying a Velodyne Puck where the overall system error can be expected to be on the order of a few centimeters. Also the histogram of return numbers in the LAS header was not populated. We can fix these issues with one call to las2las:

las2las -i CSIRO_Tower\results.laz ^
        -rescale 0.01 0.01 0.01 ^
        -auto_reoffset ^
        -odix _fixed -olaz

If you create another lasinfo report on the fixed file you will see that all the warnings have gone. The file size is now also only 102 MB instead of 142 MB because centimeter coordinate compress much better than sub-millimeter coordinates.

The average density of 318 last return per square meter reported by lasinfo is not that useful for a UAV survey because it does account for the highly varying distribution of LiDAR returns in the area surveyed. With lasgrid we can get a much more clear picture of that.

lasgrid -i CSIRO_Tower\results_fixed.laz ^
        -last_only ^
        -step 0.5 -use_bb -density ^
        -false -set_min_max 0 1500 ^
        -o CSIRO_Tower\quality\density_0_1500.png

LiDAR density: blue is close to zero and red is 1500 or more last returns / sqr mtr

The red dot in the point density indicated an area with over 1500 last returns per square meter. No surprise that this is the take-off and touch-down location of the copter drone. Naturally this spot is completely over-scanned compared to the rest of the area. We can remove these points with the help of the timestamps by cutting off the start and the end of the recording.

The total recording time including take-off, flight around the tower, and touch-down was around 180 seconds or 3 minutes as the lasinfo report tells us. Note that the recorded time stamps are neither “GPS Week Time” nor “Adjusted Standard GPS Time” but an internal system time. By visualizing the trajectory of the UAV with lasview while binning the timestamps into the intensity field we can easily determine what interval of timestamps describes the actual survey flight. First we convert the drone trajectory from the textual ASCII format to the LAZ format with txt2las:

txt2las -i CSIRO_Tower\results_traj.txt ^
        -skip 1 ^
        -parse txyz ^
        -set_classification 12 ^
        -olaz

lasview -i CSIRO_Tower\results_traj.laz ^
        -bin_gps_time_into_intensity 1

Binning timestamps into intensity allows visually determining start and end of survey.

Using lasview and pressing <i> while hovering over those points of the trajectory that appear to be the survey start and end we determine visually that the timestamps between 164 to 264 correspond to the actual survey flight over the area of interest with the take-off and touch-down maneuvers excluded. We use las2las to cut out the relevant part and re-run lasgrid:

las2las -i CSIRO_Tower\results_fixed.laz ^
        -keep_gps_time 164 264 ^
        -o CSIRO_Tower\results_survey.laz

lasgrid -i CSIRO_Tower\results_survey.laz ^
        -last_only ^
        -step 0.5 -use_bb -density ^
        -false -set_min_max 0 1500 ^
        -o CSIRO_Tower\quality\density_0_1500_survey.png

LiDAR density after removing take-off and touch-down maneuvers.

The other set of point we are less interested in are those occasional hits far from the scanner that sample the area too sparsely to be useful for anything. We use lastrack to reclassify points as noise (7) that exceed a x/y distance of 50 meters from the trajectory and then use lasgrid to create another density image without the points classified as noise..

lastrack -i CSIRO_Tower\results_survey.laz ^
         -track CSIRO_Tower\results_traj.laz ^
         -classify_xy_range_between 50 1000 7 ^
         -o CSIRO_Tower\results_xy50.laz

lasgrid -i CSIRO_Tower\results_xy50.laz ^
        -last_only -keep_class 0 ^
        -step 0.5 -use_bb -density ^
        -false -set_min_max 0 1500 ^
        -o CSIRO_Tower\quality\density_0_1500_xy50.png

LiDAR density after removing returns farther than 50 m from trajectory.

We process the remaining points using a typical tile-based processing pipeline. First we run lastile to create tiling of 200 meter by 200 meter tiles with 20 buffers while dropping the noise points::

lastile -i CSIRO_Tower\results_xy50.laz ^
        -drop_class 7 ^
        -tile_size 200 -buffer 20 -flag_as_withheld ^
        -odir CSIRO_Tower\tiles_raw -o eta.laz

Because of the high sampling we expect there to be quite a few duplicate point where all three coordinate x, y, and z are identical. We remove them with a call to lasduplicate:

lasduplicate -i CSIRO_Tower\tiles_raw\*.laz ^
             -unique_xyz ^
             -odir CSIRO_Tower\tiles_unique -olaz ^
             -cores 4

This removes between 12 to 25 thousand point from each tile. Then we use lasnoise to classify isolated points as noise:

lasnoise -i CSIRO_Tower\tiles_unique\*.laz ^
         -step_xy 0.5 -step_z 0.1 -isolated 5 ^
         -odir CSIRO_Tower\tiles_denoised_temp -olaz ^
         -cores 4

Aggressive parameters assure most noise point below ground are found.

This classifies between 13 to 23 thousand point from each tile into the noise classification code 7. We use rather aggressive settings to make sure we get most of the noise points that are below the terrain. Getting a correct ground classification in the next few steps is the main concern now even if this means that many points above the terrain on wires, towers, or vegetation will also get miss-classified as noise (at least temporarily). Next we use lasthin to classify a subset of points with classification code 8 on which we will then run the ground classification. We classify each point that is closest to the 5th percentile in elevation per 25 cm by 25 cm grid cell given there are at least 20 non-noise points in a cell. We then repeat this while increasing the cell size to 50 cm by 50 cm and 100 cm by 100 cm.

lasthin -i CSIRO_Tower\tiles_denoised_temp\*.laz ^
        -ignore_class 7 ^
        -step 0.25 -percentile 5 20 -classify_as 8 ^
        -odir CSIRO_Tower\tiles_thinned_025 -olaz ^
        -cores 4

lasthin -i CSIRO_Tower\tiles_thinned_025\*.laz ^
        -ignore_class 7 ^
        -step 0.50 -percentile 5 20 -classify_as 8 ^
        -odir CSIRO_Tower\tiles_thinned_050 -olaz ^
        -cores 4

lasthin -i CSIRO_Tower\tiles_thinned_025\*.laz ^
        -ignore_class 7 ^
        -step 1.00 -percentile 5 20 -classify_as 8 ^
        -odir CSIRO_Tower\tiles_thinned_100 -olaz ^
        -cores 4

 

All points of tile ‘eta_0_0.laz’.
TIN of points classified in three calls to lasthin.
TIN of ground points classified by lasground.

Then we ground classify the points that were classified into the temporary classification code 8 in the previous step using lasground.

lasground -i CSIRO_Tower\tiles_thinned_100\*.laz ^
          -ignore_class 7 0 ^
          -town -ultra_fine ^
          -odir CSIRO_Tower\tiles_ground -olaz ^
          -cores 4

The resulting ground points are a lower envelope of the “fluffy” sampled surfaces produced by the Velodyne Puck scanner. We use lasheight to thicken the ground by moving all points between 1 cm below and 6 cm above the TIN of these “low ground” points to a temporary classification code 6 representing a “thick ground”. We also undo the overly aggressive noise classifications above the ground by setting all higher points back to classification code 1 (unclassified).

lasheight -i CSIRO_Tower\tiles_ground\*.laz ^
          -classify_between -0.01 0.06 6 ^
          -classify_above 0.06 1 ^
          -odir CSIRO_Tower\tiles_ground_thick -olaz ^
          -cores 4

Profile view for 25 centimeter wide strip of open terrain. Top: Green points are low ground. Orange points are thickened ground with 5 cm drop lines. Middle: Brown points are median ground computed from thick ground. Bottom: Comparing low ground points (in green) with median ground points (in brown).

From the “thick ground” we then compute a “median ground” using lasthin in a similar fashion as we used it before. A profile view for a 25 centimeter wide strip of open terrain illustrates the workflow of going from “low ground” via “thick ground” to “median ground” and shows the slight difference in elevation between the two.

lasthin -i CSIRO_Tower\tiles_ground_thick\*.laz ^
        -ignore_class 0 1 7 ^
        -step 0.25 -percentile 50 10 -classify_as 2 ^
        -odir CSIRO_Tower\tiles_ground_median_025 -olaz ^
        -cores 4

lasthin -i CSIRO_Tower\tiles_ground_median_025\*.laz ^
        -ignore_class 0 1 7 ^
        -step 0.50 -percentile 50 10 -classify_as 2 ^
        -odir CSIRO_Tower\tiles_ground_median_050 -olaz ^
        -cores 4

lasthin -i CSIRO_Tower\tiles_ground_median_050\*.laz ^
        -ignore_class 0 1 7 ^
        -step 1.00 -percentile 50 10 -classify_as 2 ^
        -odir CSIRO_Tower\tiles_ground_median_100 -olaz ^
        -cores 4

Then we use lasnoise once more with more conservative settings to remove the noise points that are sprinkled around the scene.

lasnoise -i CSIRO_Tower\tiles_ground_median_100\*.laz ^
         -step_xy 1.0 -step_z 1.0 -isolated 5 ^
         -odir CSIRO_Tower\tiles_denoised -olaz ^
         -cores 4

While we classify the scene into building roofs, vegetation, and everything else with lasclassify we also move all (unused) classifications to classification code 1 (unclassified). You may play with the parameters of lasclassify (see README) to achieve better a building classification. However, those buildings the laser can peek into (either via a window or because they are gazebo-like structures) will not be classified correctly. unless you remove the points that are under the roof somehow.

lasclassify -i CSIRO_Tower\tiles_denoised\*.laz ^
            -ignore_class 7 ^
            -change_classification_from_to 0 1 ^
            -change_classification_from_to 6 1 ^
            -step 1 ^
            -odir CSIRO_Tower\tiles_classified -olaz ^
            -cores 4

A glimpse at the final classification result is below. A hillshaded DTM and a strip of classified points. Of course the tower was miss-classified as vegetation given that it looks just like a tree to the logic used in lasclassify.

The hillshaded DTM with a strip of classified points.

Finally we remove the tile buffers (that were really important for tile-based processing) with lastile:

lastile -i CSIRO_Tower\tiles_classified\*.laz ^
        -remove_buffer ^
        -odir CSIRO_Tower\tiles_final -olaz ^
        -cores 4

And publish the LiDAR point cloud as version 1.6 of Potree using laspublish:

laspublish -i CSIRO_Tower\tiles_final\*.laz ^
           -i CSIRO_Tower\results_traj.laz ^
           -only_3D -elevation -overwrite -potree16 ^
           -title "CSIRO Tower" ^
           -description "HoverMap test flight, 18 Dec 2017" ^
           -odir CSIRO_Tower\tiles_portal -o portal.html -olaz

Note that we also added the trajectory of the drone because it looks nice and gives a nice illustration of how the UAV was scanning the scene.

Via Potree we can publish and explore the final point cloud using any modern Web browser.

We would like to thank the entire team around Dr. Stefan Hrabar for taking time out of their busy schedules just a few days before Christmas.

Removing Low Noise from RIEGL’s VUX-1 UAV LiDAR flown in the Philippines

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In this tutorial we are removing some “tricky” low noise from LiDAR point clouds in order to produce a high-resolution Digital Terrain Model (DTM). The data was flown above a tropical beach and mangrove area in the Philippines using a VUX-1 UAV based system from RIEGL mounted on a helicopter. The survey was done as a test flight by AB Surveying who have the capacity to fly such missions in the Philippines and who have allowed us to share this data with you for educational purposes. You can download the data (1 GB) here. It covers a popular twin beach knows as “Nacpan” near El Nido in Palawan (that we happen to have visited in 2014).

A typical beach fringed by coconut palms in Palawan, Philippines.

We start our usual quality check with a run of lasinfo. We add the ‘-cd’ switch to compute an average point density and the ‘-histo gps_time 1’ switch to produce a 1 second histogram for the GPS time stamps.

lasinfo -i lalutaya.laz ^
        -cd ^
        -histo gps_time 1 ^
        -odix _info -otxt

You can download the resulting lasinfo report here. It tells us that there are 118,740,310 points of type 3 (with RGB colors) with an average density of 57 last returns per square meter. The point coordinates are in the “PRS92 / Philippines 1” projection with EPSG code 3121 that is based on the “Clarke 1866” ellipsoid.

Datum Transform

We prefer to work in an UTM projection based on the “WGS 1984” ellipsoid, so we will first perform a datum transform based on the seven parameter Helmert transformation – a capacity that was recently added to LAStools. For this we first need a transform to get to geocentric or Earth-Centered Earth-Fixed (ECEF) coordinates on the current “Clarke 1866” ellipsoid, then we apply the Helmert transformation that operates on geocentric coordinates and whose parameters are listed in the TOWGS84 string of EPSG code 3121 to get to geocentric or ECEF coordinates on the “WGS 1984” ellipsoid. Finally we can convert the coordinates to the respective UTM zone. These three calls to las2las accomplish this.

las2las -i lalutaya.laz ^
        -remove_all_vlrs ^
        -epsg 3121 ^
        -target_ecef ^
        -odix _ecef_clark1866 -olaz

las2las -i lalutaya_ecef_clark1866.laz ^
        -transform_helmert -127.62,-67.24,-47.04,-3.068,4.903,1.578,-1.06 ^
        -wgs84 -ecef ^
        -ocut 10 -odix _wgs84 -olaz
 
las2las -i lalutaya_ecef_wgs84.laz ^
        -target_utm auto ^
        -ocut 11 -odix _utm -olaz

In these steps we implicitly reduced the resolution that each coordinate was stored with from quarter-millimeters (i.e. scale factors of 0.00025) to the default of centimeters (i.e. scale factors of 0.01) which should be sufficient for subsequent vegetation analysis. The LAZ files also compress better when coordinates a lower resolution so that the ‘lalutaya_utm.laz’ file is over 200 MB smaller than the original ‘lalutaya.laz’ file. The quantization error this introduces is probably still below the overall scanning error of this helicopter survey.

Flightline Recovery

Playing back the file visually with lasview suggests that it contains more than one flightline. Unfortunately the point source ID field of the file is not properly populated with flightline information. However, when scrutinizing the GPS time stamp histogram in the lasinfo report we can see an occasional gap. We highlight two of these gaps in red between GPS second 540226 and 540272 and GPS second 540497 and 540556 in this excerpt from the lasinfo report:

gps_time histogram with bin size 1
[...]
 bin 540224 has 125768
 bin 540225 has 116372
 bin 540226 has 2707
 bin 540272 has 159429
 bin 540273 has 272049
 bin 540274 has 280237
[...]
 bin 540495 has 187103
 bin 540496 has 180421
 bin 540497 has 126835
 bin 540556 has 228503
 bin 540557 has 275025
 bin 540558 has 273861
[...]

We can use lasplit to recover the original flightlines based on gaps in the continuity of GPS time stamps that are bigger than 10 seconds:

lassplit -i lalutaya_utm.laz ^
         -recover_flightlines_interval 10 ^
         -odir strips_raw -o lalutaya.laz

This operation splits the points into 11 separate flightlines. The points within each flightline are stored in the order that the vendor software – which was RiPROCESS 1.7.2 from RIEGL according to the lasinfo report – had written them to file. We can use lassort to bring them back into the order they were acquired in by sorting first on the GPS time stamp and then on the return number field:

lassort -i strips_raw\*.laz ^
        -gps_time -return_number ^
        -odir strips_sorted -olaz ^
        -cores 4

Now we turn the sorted flightlines into tiles (with buffers !!!) for further processing. We also erase the current classification of the data into ground (2) and medium vegetation (4) as a quick visual inspection with lasview immediately shows that those are not correct:

lastile -i strips_sorted\*.laz ^
        -files_are_flightlines ^
        -set_classification 0 ^
        -tile_size 250 -buffer 30 -flag_as_withheld ^
        -odir tiles_raw -o lalu.laz

Quality Checking

Next comes the standard check of flightline overlap and alignment check with lasoverlap. Once more it become clear why it is so important to have flightline information. Without we may have missed what we are about to notice. We create false color images load into Google Earth to visually assess the situation. We map all absolute differences between flightlines below 5 cm to white and all absolute differences above 30 cm to saturated red (positive) or blue (negative) with a gradual shading from white to red or blue for any differences in between. We also create an overview KML file that lets us quickly see in which tile we can find the points for a particular area of interest with lasboundary.

lasoverlap -i tiles_raw\*.laz ^
           -step 1 -min_diff 0.05 -max_diff 0.30 ^
           -odir quality -opng ^
           -cores 4

lasboundary -i tiles_raw\*.laz ^
            -use_tile_bb -overview -labels ^
            -o quality\overview.kml

The resulting visualizations show (a) that our datum transform to the WGS84 ellipsoid worked because the imagery aligns nicely with Google Earth and (b) that there are several issues in the data that require further scrutiny.

Illustration of vertical flightline differences. White means less than 5 cm difference. Saturated red or blue means 30 cm or more difference.
There is an unexpected set of blue lines on the open beach that are crossing in tile ‘lalu_765000_1252750.laz’.
These blue lines stretch all along the coast and more might hide under the vegetation.
Similar lines also exist farther inland in red. Note that the sign of the difference solely depends on the order the flightlines are numbered in.

In general the data seems well aligned (most open areas are white) but there are blue and red lines crossing the survey area. With lasview have a closer look at the visible blue lines running along the beach in tile ‘lalu_765000_1252750.laz’ by repeatedly pressing ‘x’ to select a different subset and ‘x’ again to view this subset up close while pressing ‘c’ to color it differently:

lasview -i tiles_raw\lalu_765000_1252750.laz

These lines of erroneous points do not only happen along the beach but also in the middle of and below the vegetation as can be seen below:

The erroneous points in this tile are clearly visible because of their overall higher intensity.
Some are from flightline 8.
Some are from flightline 6.
And those hiding in and below the vegetation are from flightline 4.

Our initial hope was to use the higher than usual intensity of these erroneous points to reclassify them to some classification code that we would them exclude from further processing. Visually we found that a reasonable cut-off value for this tile would be an intensity above 35000:

lasview -i tiles_raw\lalu_765000_1252750.laz ^
        -keep_intensity_above 35000 ^
        -filtered_transform ^
        -set_classification 23
Reclassifying points with an intensity value above 35000 successfully marks most of the erroneous points.
But also a number of points on the trunks of the coconut trees are reclassified.
Even in the middle of the vegetation this method successfully marks those lines of erroneous points.

However, while this method seems successful on the tile shown above it fails miserably on others such as ‘lalu_764250_1251500.laz’ where large parts of the beach are very reflective and result in high intensity returns to to the dry white sand:

lasview -i tiles_raw\lalu_764250_1251500.laz ^
        -keep_intensity_above 35000 ^
        -filtered_transform ^
        -set_classification 23
The RGB images taken simultaneously show where the sand was wet and where it was dry.
This results in ground with very different reflective properties and therefore drastically different intensity values.
The high-intensity returns from dry sand indicate that our “intensity fix” will not work for the entire survey.

Low Noise Removal

In the following we describe a workflow that can remove the erroneous points below the ground so that we can at least construct a high-quality DTM from the data. This will not, however, remove the erroneous points above the ground so a subsequent vegetation analysis would still be affected. Our approach is based on two obervations (a) the erroneous points affect only a relatively small area and (b) different flightlines have their erroneous points in different areas. The idea is to compute a set of coarser ground points separately for each flightline and – when combining them in the end – to pick higher ground points over lower ones. The combined points should then define a surface that is above the erroneous below-ground points so that we can mark them with lasheight as not to be used for the actual ground classification done thereafter.

The new huge_las_file_extract_ground_points_only.bat example batch script that you can download here does all the work needed to compute a set of coarser ground points for each flightline. Simply edit the file such that the LAStools variable points to your LAStools\bin folder and rename it to end with the *.bat extension. Then run:

huge_las_file_extract_ground_points_only strips_sorted\lalutaya_0000001.laz strips_ground_only\lalutaya_0000001.laz
huge_las_file_extract_ground_points_only strips_sorted\lalutaya_0000002.laz strips_ground_only\lalutaya_0000001.laz
huge_las_file_extract_ground_points_only strips_sorted\lalutaya_0000003.laz strips_ground_only\lalutaya_0000001.laz
...
huge_las_file_extract_ground_points_only strips_sorted\lalutaya_0000009.laz strips_ground_only\lalutaya_0000009.laz
huge_las_file_extract_ground_points_only strips_sorted\lalutaya_0000010.laz strips_ground_only\lalutaya_0000010.laz
huge_las_file_extract_ground_points_only strips_sorted\lalutaya_0000011.laz strips_ground_only\lalutaya_0000011.laz

The details on how this batch script works – a pretty standard tile-based multi-core processing workflow – are given as comments in this batch script. Now we have a set of individual ground points computed separately for each flightline and some will include erroneous points below the ground that the lasground algorithm by its very nature is likely to latch on to as you can see here:

The ground points of flightline 2 do not contain erroneous points in this area.
But the ground points of flightline 6 clearly do latch on to erroneous points.
Also the ground points of flightline 8 clearly do latch on to erroneous points.
By combining the ground points from all flightlines and giving preference to higher ones we can create a set of ground points free of erroneous points.

The trick is now to utilize the redundancy of multiple scans per area and – when combining flightlines – to pick higher rather than lower ground points in overlap areas by using the ground point closest to the 75th elevation percentile per 2 meter by 2 meter area with at least 3 or more points with lasthin:

lasthin -i strips_ground_only\*.laz -merged ^
        -step 2 -percentile 75 3 ^
        -o lalutaya_ground_only_2m_75_3.laz

There are still some non-ground points in the result as ground-classifying of flightlines individually often results in vegetation returns being included in sparse areas along the edges of the flight lines but we can easily get rid of those:

lasground_new -i lalutaya__ground_only_2m_75_3.laz ^
              -town -hyper_fine ^
              -odix _g -olaz

We sort the remaining ground points into a space-filling curve order with lassort and spatially index them with lasindex so they can be efficiently accessed by lasheight in the next step.

lassort -i lalutaya__ground_only_2m_75_3_g.laz ^
        -keep_class 2 ^
        -o lalutaya_ground.laz

lasindex -i lalutaya_ground.laz

Finally we have the means to robustly remove the erroneous points below the ground from all tiles. We use lasheight with the ground points we’ve just so painstakingly computed to classify all points 20 cm or more below the ground surface they define into classification code 23. Later we simply can ignore this classification code during processing:

lasheight -i tiles_raw\*.laz ^
          -ground_points lalutaya_ground.laz ^
          -do_not_store_in_user_data ^
          -classify_below -0.2 23 ^
          -odir tiles_cleaned -olaz ^
          -cores 4
All points of tile ‘lalu_765000_1252750.laz’.
The points marked as classification code 23 by lasheight.
Remaining points of tile ‘lalu_765000_1252750.laz’.

Rather than trying to ground classify all remaining points we run lasground on a thinned subset of all points. For this we mark the lowest point in every 20 cm by 20 cm grid cell with some temporary classification code such as 6.

lasthin -i tiles_cleaned\*.laz ^
        -ignore_class 23 ^
        -step 0.20 -lowest -classify_as 6 ^
        -odir tiles_thinned -olaz ^
        -cores 4

Finally we can run lasground to compute the ground classification considering all points with classification code 6 by ignoring all points with classification codes 23 and 0.

lasground_new -i tiles_thinned\*.laz ^
              -ignore_class 23 0 ^
              -city -hyper_fine ^
              -odir tiles_ground_new -olaz ^
              -cores 4

And finally we can create a DTM with a resolution of 25 cm using las2dem and the result is truly beautiful:

las2dem -i tiles_ground_new\*.laz ^
        -keep_class 2 ^
        -step 0.25 -use_tile_bb ^
        -odir tiles_dtm_25cm -obil ^
        -cores 4

We have to admit that a few bumps are left (see mouse cursor below) but adjusting the parameters presented here is left as an exercise to the reader.

We would again like to acknowledge AB Surveying whose generosity has made this blog article possible. They have the capacity to fly such missions in the Philippines and who have allowed us to share this data with you for educational purposes.

LASmoons: Sebastian Kasanmascheff

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Sebastian Kasanmascheff (recipient of three LASmoons)
Forest Inventory and Remote Sensing
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, GERMANY

Background:
Forest inventories are the backbone of forest management in Germany. In most federal forestry administrations in Germany, they are performed every ten years in order to assure that logging activities are sustainable. The process involves trained foresters who visit each stand (i.e. an area where the forest is similar in terms of age structure and tree species) and perform angle count sampling as developed by Walter Bitterlich in 1984. In a second step the annual growth is calculated using yield tables and finally a harvest volume is derived. There are three particular reasons to investigate how remote sensing can be integrated in the current inventory system:

  1. The current process does not involve random sampling of the sampling points and thus does not offer any measure of the accuracy of the data.
  2. Forest engineers hardly ever rely on the inventory data as a stand-alone basis for logging planning. Most often they rely on intuition alone and on the total volume count that they have to deliver for a wider area every year.
  3. In the last ten years, the collection of high-resolution LiDAR data has become more cost-effective and most federal agencies in Germany have access to it.

In order to be able to integrate the available remote-sensing data for forest inventories in Germany, it is important to tell apart different tree species as well as estimate their volumes.

Hesse is one of the most forested federal states in Germany.

Goal:
The goal of this project is to perform an object-based classification of conifer trees in Northern Hesse based on high-resolution LiDAR and multi-spectral orthophotos. The first step is to delineate the tree crowns. The second step is to perform a semi-automated classification using the spectral signature of the different conifer species.

Data:
+ DSM (1m), DTM (1m), DSM (0.2 m) of the study area
+ Stereo images with 0.2 m resolution
+ high-resolution LiDAR data (average 10 points/m²)
+ forest inventory data
+ vector files of the individual forest stands
+ ground control points (field data)
All of this data is provided by the Hessian Forest Agency (HessenForst).

LAStools processing:
1) merge and clip the LAZ files [las2las]
2) classify ground and non-ground points [lasground]
3) remove low and high outliers [lasheight, lasnoise]
4) identify buildings within the study area [lasclassify]
5) create a normalized point cloud [lasheight]
6) create a highest-return canopy height model (CHM) [lasthin, las2dem]
7) create a pit-free (CHM) with the spike-free algorithm [las2dem]