Procedure for Locating Trees and Estimating Diameters Using LiDAR Data

Abstract

Segmentation of a forest area with high accuracy is a non-trivial task. In this paper, the authors examined the procedure for determining the coordinates of the location of trees and their diameters in order to obtain an initial idea of the structure and quantitative filling of the forest area. To conduct the study, LiDAR data were collected from a mixed forest located in Russia with a high density of trees with a total area of about 1 hectare. The proposed procedure provides detection of 97.5% of trees. Several methods are used: covariance analysis and k-d-tree partitioning, hierarchical and non-hierarchical DBSCAN segmentation algorithm, HyperLS circle point approximation method, as well as other algorithms. All the data obtained is planned to be used for further segmentation of the forest area.