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Abstract: Outlining patches dominated by different plants in wetland vegetation provides information on species succession, microhabitat patterns, wetland health and ecosystem services. Aerial photogrammetry and hyperspectral imaging are the usual data acquisition methods but the application of airborne laser scanning (ALS) as a standalone tool also holds promises for this field since it can be used to quantify 3-dimensional vegetation structure. Lake Balaton is a large shallow lake in western Hungary with shore wetlands that have been in decline since the 1970s. In August 2010, an ALS survey of the shores of Lake Balaton was completed with 1 pt/m 2 discrete echo recording. The resulting ALS dataset was processed to several output rasters describing vegetation and terrain properties, creating a sufficient number of independent variables for each raster cell to allow for basic multivariate classification. An expert-generated decision tree algorithm was applied to outline wetland areas, and within these, patches dominated by Typha sp. Carex sp., and Phragmites australis. Reed health was mapped into four categories: healthy, stressed