Development and Application of Three Dimensional Measurement System for Toropical Rainforest Canopy

As the most basic knowledge of remote sensing, spectral radiances that are reflected from the surface and received by the sensor are under the influence of various physical factors. One of the most important factors is the reflectance properties of the surface such as spatial, spectral and biophysical conditions. On the other hand, Tropical Rainforest is known as the most important for us to sustain the global earth environment. However it is impossible to reach its canopy top because of their tall height. Recent years some of canopy access systems such as walk way and crane appeared in the world. This kind of canopy crane can provide use good opportunities to know the mechanisms of atmosphere-ecosphere interaction. From the above background, we used the tropical canopy crane system with 80m height and 75m arm length as our measurement platform, and developed the three-dimensional canopy structure measurement system by laser scanning system. One of main purposes of this study is to identify three dimensional canopy surface structures. Our used laser scanning system, which we developed, is integrated system with Global Positioning System, non-prism based laser scanning system and related technologies instead of traditional photogrammetric techniques. The laser scanning system, which is loaded on the gondola of crane, is introduced to the every measurement point by the manipulation of the arm swing and gondola moving. Both of monitoring system of the crane and Global Positioning System (GPS) estimate each measurement point where we are. Furthermore the Digital Surface Model (DSM) for tropical canopy was generated from the obtained three-dimensional data. This kind of information could provide the most common and important knowledge for multi-disciplinary scientists in order to know the tropical canopy.