Supporting Precision Forestry in Great Britain

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By earthzine | 02 July 2012 | 310

Forest Research UK (FR) has developed an application that will allow foresters to create detailed maps of current woodlands on the public forest estate. This application integrates airborne LiDAR, an active sensor technology also known as light detection and ranging, that can measure the distance to a target by illuminating it with pulses from a laser, with a suite of models developed at FR and the British Forestry Commission’s Forest Enterprise Subcompartment Database (SCDB).

The aim is to develop a method to estimate woodland parameters at a very fine scale and using them as input to specific models capable of deriving information about, for example, the timber quality and stability of forest stands. The UK Forestry Commission’s growth models for Sitka spruce (Hamilton and Christie, 1971) have been re-engineered to estimate Site Index, mean diameter at breast height, basal area, standing volume and total number of trees per unit area as a function of top height, measured directly from LiDAR and combined with stand variables extracted from the SCDB such as age and species. Estimates are standardized by the percentage of canopy cover, which is also derived from LiDAR. The results are presented in units of 10 x 10 square meters, which can be aggregated inside stand boundaries. The example demonstrated here is based on LiDAR data acquired in Aberfoyle (Central Scotland) in 2008. Maps provide a synoptic view of the degree of variability in commercial forests and allow users to run more realistic scenarios using a wide variety of specific models. This new information could allow foresters to implement alternative silviculture methods and, therefore, manage forest resources in a more sustainable and precise manner.

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