Generation of DEM Data Under Forest Canopy Using Airborne Lidar

Accurate DEM surface of forest floor is very important to extract any meaningful information regarding forest stand structure, such as tree heights, stand density, crown morphology, and biomass. In airborne lidar data processing, DEM data of forest floor is mostly generated by interpolating those elevation points obtained from last laser returns. In this study, we try to analyze the property of the last laser return under relatively dense forest canopy. Airborne laser data were obtained over the study area in relatively dense pine plantation forest. Two DEM data were generated by using all the points in the last laser returns and using only those points after removing non-ground points. From the preliminary analysis on these DEM data, we found that more than half of points among the last laser returns are actually hit from canopy, branches, and understory vegetation that should be removed before generating the surface DEM data.