A simplified method on estimation of forest roughness by use of aerial LIDAR data

Abstract

In the last decade, satellite-based measurements combined with local land cover information have produced datasets with a very detailed land cover description. CORINE Land Cover (CLC) dataset is owned and maintained by the European Environmental Agency (EEA) and published at the agency's website. Another remote sensing tool, developed in the same period, is the terrain LIDAR scanners with very high resolution and porosity information. In the current study, LIDAR scans of mainland Denmark with 0.4 m resolution were used to estimate the aerodynamic roughness of large forests, the borders of which were defined with the help of the CLC dataset. The results are compared with available in situ measurement results from the scientific literature. There was a generally good agreement between calculated and measured displacement height values but less so for aerodynamic roughness values due to the employed spatial averaging process. The results reveal a promising application that can be used for forest parameterization within modeling tools.