Remote Sensing and LiDAR Applications

LiDAR remote sensing uses pulsed laser light to measure the three-dimensional structure of forests with centimeter-scale precision, enabling researchers to estimate tree height, canopy density, aboveground biomass, and carbon stocks across landscapes that would be impractical to survey on foot. Because forests store roughly half of terrestrial carbon, accurate and repeatable measurements of that storage are essential for tracking climate commitments, modeling ecosystem dynamics, and guiding sustainable forest management. Airborne laser scanning can cover large regions efficiently, while terrestrial systems capture fine-grained structural detail at the stand level, and a central challenge in the field is integrating these complementary data sources with satellite observations to produce consistent global forest inventories. Active research directions include improving biomass estimation in structurally complex tropical forests, reducing uncertainty in carbon accounting, and developing machine-learning pipelines capable of detecting individual trees and species from increasingly dense point-cloud datasets.

Works

109,297

Total citations

1,027,977

Keywords

Lidar Remote SensingForest Carbon StocksAboveground BiomassTree Height EstimationGlobal Forest MappingAirborne Laser Scanning