Combination of Terrestrial Laser Scanning with High Resolution Panoramic Images for Investigations in Forest Apllications and Tree Species Recognition

The management and planning of forests presumes the availability of up-to-date information on their current state. The relevant parameters like tree species, diameter of the bowl in defined heights, tree heights and positions are usually represented by a forest inventory. In order to allow the collection of these inventory parameters, an approach aiming on the integration of a terrestrial laser scanner and a high resolution panoramic camera has been developed. The integration of these sensors provides geometric information from distance measurement and high resolution radiometric information from the panoramic images. In order to enable a combined evaluation, in the first processing step a coregistration of both data sets is required. Afterwards geometric quantities like position and diameter of trees can be derived from the LIDAR data, whereas texture parameters as derived from the high resolution panoramic imagery can be applied for tree species recognition. Corresponding author