Determining the location of trees and their log products within a stand

This paper describes research on methods to identify the locations of trees and their log products within a forest area. Three approaches are considered. The first uses geostatistical procedures to interpolate between values measured on plots with known locations. The remaining two methods are based on remotely sensed information. One combines satellite imagery with stand maps and inventory plots in a multi-source inventory procedure. The other uses automatic image processing of largescale aerial photography to identify the location of each individual tree in a stand, with the potential for combining this with individual tree measurement and sampling schemes The research has shown that techniques based on locating the positions of individual trees appear to show the most promise.