Ultraportable Terrestrial Lidar in Tropical Forest Ecosystems

This work describes and evaluates the use of low-cost, rapid-scanning, ultraportable terrestrial lidar to obtain detailed three dimensional representations of the lower canopy, trunk buttresses and understory of tropical rain forests to augment traditional field measurements and aid in the assessment and refinement of remotely sensed estimates of above ground biomass. Field, airborne and spaceborne methods have been shown to generally capture the bulk of above ground forest biomass at varying spatial resolutions. However a tropical rain forest is composed of multiple canopies and dense understory and these components, along with characteristic tree buttresses and enveloping lianas, contribute to the overall biomass. These lower components are difficult to definitively characterize from airborne (or spaceborne) measurements. Fortunately, terrestrial lidar scanning 3D reconstructions can be used to non-destructively obtain detailed estimates of the biomass contribution of these lower foliage and woody contributions in order to verify and refine remotely sensed estimates. This demonstrates how low-cost, rapid-scanning, and easily deployed terrestrial lidars such as the University of Massachusetts Boston Canopy Biomass Lidar (CBL) can be used to obtain these 3D reconstructions at the long term tropical rain forest plots of the CARBONO project at La Selva Biological Station, and plots near the Sirena Research Station, Costa Rica.