Comparing canopy metrics derived from terrestrial and airborne laser scanning in a Douglas-fir dominated forest stand

Accurate estimates of vegetation structure are important for a large number of applications including ecological modeling and carbon budgets. Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) measures the three-dimensional structure of vegetation using laser beams. Most LiDAR applications today rely on airborne platforms for data acquisitions, which typically record between 1 and 5 “discrete” returns for each outgoing laser pulse. Although airborne LiDAR allows sampling of canopy characteristics at stand and landscape level scales, this method is largely insensitive to below canopy biomass, such as understorey and trunk volumes, as these elements are often occluded by the upper parts of the crown, especially in denser canopies. As a supplement to airborne laser scanning (ALS), a number of recent studies used terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) for the biomass estimation in spatially confined areas. One such instrument is the Echidna® Validation Instrument (EVI), which is configured to fully digitize the returned energy of an emitted laser pulse to establish a complete profile of the observed vegetation elements. In this study we assess and compare a number of canopy metrics derived from airborne and TLS. Three different experiments were conducted using discrete return ALS data and discrete and full waveform observations derived from the EVI. Although considerable differences were found in the return distribution of both systems, ALS and TLS were both able to accurately determine canopy height (Δ height < 2.5 m) and the vertical distribution of foliage and leaf area (0.86 > r ² > 0.90, p < 0.01). When using more spatially explicit approaches for modeling the biomass and volume throughout the stands, the differences between ALS and TLS observations were more distinct; however, predictable patterns exist based on sensor position and configuration.