Fusion of hyperspectral and LIDAR remote sensing data for the estimation of tree stem diameters

The estimation of stem diameters can be very useful in the study of forests, as together with height and tree specie, it is one of the most important parameters used in forest inventories. In this paper a system for the estimation of stem diameters with LIDAR and hyperspectral data (both separately and combined in a data fusion framework) is presented. An analysis on the effectiveness of these data in the estimation process and on the accuracy and robustness of different estimation algorithms is presented. Experimental results point out the effectiveness and the properties of the proposed system. ©2009 IEEE.