Accuracy Assessment of Wearable Mobile Laser Scanning for Individual Tree Detection and Forest Structural Parameter Estimation

Abstract

Atilla Karabacak

Wearable mobile laser scanning (WMLS) systems have emerged as a transformative technology in forest inventory and management, offering high-resolution point cloud data capture at both plot and individual tree levels. This comprehensive research evaluates the accuracy of WMLS platforms for individual tree detection (ITD) and the extraction of vital forest structural parameters, including tree height, stem diameter at breast height (DBH), and canopy crown dimensions across heterogeneous woodland ecosystems. Field measurements obtained from diverse permanent sample plots were rigorously compared against point cloud derivations processed through advanced bottom-up clustering, morphological filtering, and segmentation algorithms. The empirical findings demonstrate that wearable laser scanning systems provide exceptional precision in capturing lower and mid-canopy structural attributes, yielding detection accuracies exceeding 92% in open to moderately dense stands while significantly reducing field acquisition duration compared to traditional terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and manual inventories.

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