Remote Sensing and LiDAR Applications

LiDAR remote sensing uses pulsed laser light to measure vegetation structure with centimeter-scale precision, allowing researchers to estimate tree height, canopy architecture, and aboveground biomass across landscapes that would be impractical to survey on foot. These measurements feed directly into estimates of forest carbon stocks, making LiDAR a critical tool for tracking how much carbon forests sequester and how that changes with disturbance, logging, or climate stress. Airborne laser scanning can cover large regions efficiently, while terrestrial systems capture fine-grained detail at the individual tree level, and a central challenge in the field is reconciling these scales to produce reliable global forest maps. Active research is pushing toward combining LiDAR with satellite imagery and radar data to fill spatial gaps and reduce the cost of continuous, wall-to-wall forest monitoring worldwide.

Works

110,443

Total citations

1,040,282

Keywords

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