Estimating Timber Volume with LIDAR

Moez Labiadh
Moez Labiadh

January 13, 2022

Estimating Timber Volume with LIDAR

Project Overview

In This project, I proposed an algorithm to calculate individual tree (stem) volumes based on LiDAR derived Canopy Height Module (CHM).


The main Workflow steps:

  1. Clean-up the CHM dataset: Apply a Gaussian filtering to eliminate spurious values and apply a minimum tree height threshold to filter out intermediate vegetation stages.
  2. Delineate individual Tree Crowns using Local Maxima and Watershed segmentation algorithm.
  3. Extract explanatory variables (Tree Height & Crown Area) for each tree.
  4. Predict DBH using Regression models – from "R.J. Hall et al., 1985: A Comparison of Existing Models for DBH estimation from Large-scale Photos"
  5. Estimate Volumes using BC forests 1976 volumes equations.


Dependencies

The following packages need to be installed on your Python Env to run the this code:

  • Numpy
  • Scipy
  • Pandas
  • Osgeo (gdal and ogr)
  • Scikit-image


Links

Github Repo

Notebook

Slides

Demo

Tools used

Python

Plug-ins used

GDAL

tags

Python

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