Terrestrial laser scanning in volume and biomass modelling – Overview

Growing stock volume and biomass are among the most important attributes in forest-related decision making, from private owners of small forest holdings to global level policy makers. The reliability of estimates of those attributes depends essentially on the availability of existing allometric models. These models at tree level offer consistent estimates but they are available only for fraction of tree species due to the amount of required reference data (i.e. sample size for developing these models must be rather large to include diversity within and between species) and the fact that detailed destructive sampling of trees is needed in developing these models. Over the past decade, the technological development has been immense, and especially the introduction of terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) that measures its surroundings with millions to billions of high detail 3D points, have created new opportunities for acquiring the needed reference. Therefore, the aim of this work was to evaluate the advantages and possible challenges of TLS technique in volume and biomass modelling. In addition, the aim was to identify the key factors affecting the capabilities of TLS data in model development and calibration.Peer reviewe