Aerial LiDAR survey of forests
Drone LiDAR scanning of forests and green areas: terrain models beneath the canopy, tree heights, canopy cover and metrics for forest inventory.
Conventional topographic surveying in forests is slow and difficult: dense trees weaken GNSS signals and block sight lines, and in aerial photographs the ground is often not visible at all. Aerial laser scanning solves this problem: part of each laser pulse passes between the leaves to the ground, and several returns are recorded from every pulse.
The same dataset therefore yields both the true terrain under the forest and the surface of the tree crowns. The difference between them is the canopy height model (CHM), from which individual tree heights, crown diameters, canopy cover and stand structure are derived. These metrics matter for forest inventory, timber volume estimation and wildfire risk analysis.
In the forested areas of the Greater and Lesser Caucasus and the Talysh mountains in Azerbaijan, LiDAR terrain also provides a reliable basis for routing roads, pipelines and power lines and for assessing mudflow and landslide risks. The data is converted into GIS layers and delivered in any coordinate system the client requires.
When you need it
- Forest inventory and timber volume estimation
- Terrain and drainage mapping in wooded areas
- Design of corridors crossing forest land
- Vegetation control along power line rights-of-way
- Mudflow, landslide and wildfire risk analysis
- Environmental studies and green-space monitoring
What's included
- Flight planning adapted to canopy density
- Control points measured by GNSS
- Scanning with multi-return LiDAR
- Ground and vegetation classification
- Under-canopy DTM and canopy height model (CHM)
- Tree height, canopy cover and density metrics
How we work
- Review of the task and forest characteristics
- Flight plan and control network
- Aerial laser scanning
- Processing, classification and metric calculation
- Delivery of GIS layers and report
Deliverables
- Classified point cloud
- Under-canopy terrain model and contours
- Canopy height model and tree metrics table
- GIS layers (SHP, GeoTIFF) and explanatory report
