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Accurate detection and delineation of individual trees and their crowns in dense forest environments are essential for forest management and ecological applications. This study explores the potential of combining leaf-off and leaf-on structure from motion (SfM) data products from unoccupied aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with RGB cameras. The main objective was to develop a reliable method for precise tree stem detection and crown delineation in dense deciduous forests, demonstrated at a structurally diverse old-growth forest in the Hainich National Park, Germany. Stem positions were extracted from the leaf-off point cloud by a clustering algorithm. The accuracy of the derived stem co-ordinates and the overall UAV-SfM point cloud were assessed separately, considering different tree types. Extracted tree stems were used as markers for individual tree crown delineation (ITCD) through a region growing algorithm on the leaf-on data. Stem positioning showed high precision values (0.867). Including leaf-off stem positions enhanced the crown delineation, but crown delineations in dense forest canopies remain challenging. Both the number of stems and crowns were underestimated, suggesting that the number of overstory trees in dense forests tends to be higher than commonly estimated in remote sensing approaches. In general, UAV-SfM point clouds prove to be a cost-effective and accurate alternative to LiDAR data for tree stem detection. The combined datasets provide valuable insights into forest structure, enabling a more comprehensive understanding of the canopy, stems, and forest floor, thus facilitating more reliable forest parameter extraction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In current forestry investigation studies, the research hotspots have tended to concentrate on ascertaining the precision of certain tree parameters. This has resulted in an augmented intricacy of the technique in terms of algorithms and observation instruments. The complexity of the technology and the cost of the equipment make it impossible to use for large-scale forest surveys, for example, a national forest inventory (NFI). The aim of our study was to design a new type of low-cost measuring method that could be utilized in a NFI and in developing countries. Meanwhile, the newly designed method was expected to be able to output certain forest measurement factors without necessitating data processing by NFI field investigators. Based on these objectives, we developed a measuring method that included hardware comprised of two tools. The first tool was an electronic measuring tape that contained a microcontroller unit (MCU) and could automatically record and collaborate with other equipment via wireless protocols. The second tool was a tree stem position mapper that utilized our own designed mechanisms. The results showed that the tree DBH measurements exhibited a 0.05 cm (0.20%) bias and a 0.36 cm (1.45%) root mean square error (RMSE), and the biases on the x-axis and the y-axis of the tree position estimations were −15.92–9.92 cm and −25.90–10.88 cm, respectively, accompanied by corresponding RMSEs of 15.27–29.40 cm and 14.49–34.68 cm. Moreover, an efficiency test determined that the average measurement time per tree was 20.34 s, thus, demonstrating a marked improvement in speed by nearly one-fold compared to the conventional method. Meanwhile, this measurement kit costs less than 150 Euros and is economically suitable for large-scale applications. We posit that our method has the potential to serve as a standard tool in a Chinese NFI and in developing countries in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of altitude, the position of the trees along a gradient of canopy cover, and the orientation of their crown on leaf traits of 18 deciduous woody species belonging to 10 families in the Fandoglo forest region in Ardabil, North West of Iran. We measured eight leaf traits (leaf width, length, area, thickness, water content, leaf mass per area, specific leaf area, and dry matter concentration) of trees sampled at sites subjected to different light regimes (forest edge, forest understory, and isolated trees). All traits were measured on more than 3600 leaves from 90 trees sampled in two altitudinal ranges (low: 1300-1500 m a.s.l.; high: 1500-1700 m a.s.l.). A two-way ANOVA and t-test for independent samples were applied to test for differences in leaf traits between different altitudes and degree of canopy cover. The results confirmed that species’ leaf traits were more strongly correlated with the altitude and canopy cover rather than the orientation of the crown. No relationship between leaf traits and crown orientation was detected. All leaf traits had significantly higher values at low than at high elevation, indicating that environmental factors such as atmospheric CO2 concentration, temperature, light, irradiance, and wind deeply impact on foliar morphology and function; however, water content and specific leaf area showed an opposite trend. Also, species with different positions along the gradient of canopy cover could have different responses to elevation. Our results indicate that the variation of functional (morphological and physiological) traits in different tree species are affected by altitude and light regime. This might provide a theoretical basis for afforestation and forest management activities in the Fandoghlo forest region.

Automatic tree identification and position using high-resolution remote sensing images are critical for ecological garden planning, management, and large-scale environmental quality detection. However, existing single-tree detection methods have a high rate of misdetection in forests not only due to the similarity of background and crown colors but also because light and shadow caused abnormal crown shapes, resulting in a high rate of misdetections and missed detection. This article uses urban plantations as the primary research sample. In conjunction with the most recent deep learning method for object detection, a single-tree detection method based on the lite fourth edition of you only look once (YOLOv4-Lite) was proposed. YOLOv4’s object detection framework has been simplified, and the MobileNetv3 convolutional neural network is used as the primary feature extractor to reduce the number of parameters. Data enhancement is performed for categories with fewer single-tree samples, and the loss function is optimized using focal loss. The YOLOv4-Lite method is used to detect single trees on campus, in an orchard, and an economic plantation. Not only is the YOLOv4-Lite method compared to traditional methods such as the local maximum value method and the watershed method, where it outperforms them by nearly 46.1%, but also to novel methods such as the Chan-Vese model and the template matching method, where it outperforms them by nearly 26.4%. The experimental results for single-tree detection demonstrate that the YOLOv4-Lite method improves accuracy and robustness by nearly 36.2%. Our work establishes a reference for the application of YOLOv4-Lite in additional agricultural and plantation products.

Reliable forest resource information is needed to assess the forest development status and design management plans for forest maintenance and conservation. The forest field sample inventory is a vital forest resource inventory method. Thus, forest inventory reliability depends on tree attribute estimation accuracy and the quantity and quality of field samples. Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM)-based mobile laser scanners (MLSs) are convenient inventory tools due to their mobility and global navigation satellite system (GNSS) signal independence. However, such scanners may be heavy, expensive and unable to verify results on-site. With the improved SLAM algorithm and chip computing capabilities, a smartphone can deploy an online SLAM system, which allows the smartphone to perform the relative positioning in forests without GNSS signals. Previous research studies have demonstrated this simple, portable, and economical device for estimating the tree position and diameter at breast height (DBH) through tree-by-tree measurements in real time. However, the device might face a challenge in large-scale forest inventories because the image-feature-based backend may not work well in forests that are not well constructed for traditional SLAM systems. In this paper, an online trunk-based backend was designed to accurately estimate tree position and correct pose drift in large-scale forest inventories in real time. Specifically, a trunk-based loop closure detection algorithm was designed for detecting whether an earlier observed tree is re-observed to provide nodes and constraints for tree position graph optimization; this algorithm uses the provided nodes and constraints to build and optimize the tree position graph and then correct the current pose based on the optimized globally consistent tree position graph. This new backend was integrated with the previous work as an executable program that can be deployed on a smartphone with an online RGB-D SLAM system. The method was tested in 5 field sample plots (32 × 32 m), and the reference tree positions were collected using terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) through multi-scan mode. The distance mean between the estimated and reference tree positions was 0.133 m when using our new backend, and it was 0.759 m when estimated with the RTAB-Map. The tree position estimates were unbiased and had root mean square errors (RMSEs) of less than 0.09 m in the x-axis, y-axis and z-axis directions when using the trunk-based backend. However, the estimates had biases of −0.125 m, −0.261 m and 0.262 m and RMSEs of more than 0.30 m in the x-axis, y-axis and z-axis directions without the new backend. The results showed that the designed trunk-based backend allows a smartphone with an online SLAM system to function as an accurate and efficient tool for large-scale forest inventories. However, the method was tested only in 32 × 32 m square field sample plots. More tests must be performed in larger plots in the future, although enough loop-closure constraints can theoretically guarantee the accuracy of the tree position graph and current pose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research investigates the use of scale-space theory to detect individual trees in orchards from very-high resolution (VHR) satellite images. Trees are characterized by blobs, for example, bell-shaped surfaces. Their modeling requires the identification of local maxima in Gaussian scale space, whereas location of the maxima in the scale direction provides information about the tree size. A two-step procedure relates the detected blobs to tree objects in the field. First, a Gaussian blob model identifies tree crowns in Gaussian scale space. Second, an improved tree crown model modifies this model in the scale direction. The procedures are tested on the following three representative cases: an area with vitellaria trees in Mali, an orchard with walnut trees in Iran, and one case with oil palm trees in Indonesia. The results show that the refined Gaussian blob model improves upon the traditional Gaussian blob model by effectively discriminating between false and correct detections and accurately identifying size and position of trees. A comparison with existing methods shows an improvement of 10–20% in true positive detections. We conclude that the presented two-step modeling procedure of tree crowns using Gaussian scale space is useful to automatically detect individual trees from VHR satellite images for at least three representative cases.

The present study introduces a method to identify tree stems from terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) data. We focused on forest environments of diverse and layered structure, which were technically characterized by strong occlusion effects with regards to laser scanning. The number and distribution of tree stems are important information for the management of protective forests against natural hazards, for forest inventory, and for ecological studies. Our approach builds upon a three-dimensional (3D) voxel grid transformation of the original point cloud data, followed by two major steps of processing. Firstly, a series of morphological operations removed leaves and branches and left only potential stem segments. Secondly, the stem segments of each tree were combined by a multipart workflow, which uses shape and neighborhood criteria. At the same time, erroneous fragments and noise were removed from the dataset. As a result, each object in the voxel grid was represented by a single connected component referring to one specific tree stem. Testing the method on nine spatially independent plots provided detection rates of 97% for the number and location of stems from mature trees with a diameter 12 cm and 84% for smaller trees with a minimum of 130 cm total tree height. In summary, we obtained a dataset covering the number and locations of the stems from both mature and understory trees, while not aiming at a precise reconstruction of the stem shape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The amount of catechin and 4-hydroxyacetophenone in the methanolic extract of the Norway spruce needles at the locality Bílý Kříǽ (Moravian–Silesian Beskydy Mts.) was found in the range 2.8–12.1 mg g-1 (dry weight) and 0.2–17.7 mg g-1 (dry weight), respectively. Total amount of catechin (sum of the last three needle year-classes) is statistically higher (p<0.01) in the sparse areas compared to the dense ones and similar trends were recorded for catechin content in current and one-year-old needles. These results may support an idea about primary control of phenolic production by the incident solar radiation, which depends on the social position of the tree and canopy closure degree. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Individual tree identification is a key step for forest surveying and monitoring. To identify individual trees with airborne LiDAR data, a local maximum (LM) filter technique is typically performed. With LM, the highest point in a filtering window is generally considered to represent the tree position. This assumption, however, has great limitations, especially for mixed forests. To address this problem, we developed a new approach, the cluster center of higher points (CCHP), for tree position detection with LiDAR data. CCHP assumes that a tree position is located at the clustering center of higher points within a spatial neighborhood, and the center can be detected by a location-based recursive algorithm. The developed CCHP method was applied to a simulated forest and then verified in two real urban forests. In comparison with the variable window-sized LM filter method and layer stacking method, CCHP successfully identified 97% of trees in the simulated forest, while only 78% and 81% of the trees were recognized by LM and layer stacking methods respectively. The average absolute and relative offsets of CCHP are 0.33 m and 6.59%, respectively, and over 80% of the detected trees have an offset of less than 10% of the tree crown radius. CCHP also correctly detected 93.80% and 88.74% of individual trees in the first and second real forests, respectively, but the detection rates from the variable window-sized LM approach and layer stacking were less than 80%. In addition, the tree positions located by CCHP are considerably more accurate than the other two methods. Therefore, CCHP is proven to be promising for detecting individual tree positions from airborne LiDAR data for both simulated and real forests. • A CCHP approach was developed to identify individual trees using airborne LiDAR data. • The CCHP method assumes that the point cluster center represents the tree position. • The CCHP method was implemented in a location-based recursive algorithm. • The CCHP method reduces the impact of outliers through statistical analysis. • The CCHP method can be used for tree position detection with various crown shapes in mixed forests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research investigates the use of scale-space theory to detect individual trees in orchards from very-high resolution (VHR) satellite images. Trees are characterized by blobs, for example, bell-shaped surfaces. Their modeling requires the identification of local maxima in Gaussian scale space, whereas location of the maxima in the scale direction provides information about the tree size. A two-step procedure relates the detected blobs to tree objects in the field. First, a Gaussian blob model identifies tree crowns in Gaussian scale space. Second, an improved tree crown model modifies this model in the scale direction. The procedures are tested on the following three representative cases: an area with vitellaria trees in Mali, an orchard with walnut trees in Iran, and one case with oil palm trees in Indonesia. The results show that the refined Gaussian blob model improves upon the traditional Gaussian blob model by effectively discriminating between false and correct detections and accurately identifying size and position of trees. A comparison with existing methods shows an improvement of 10–20% in true positive detections. We conclude that the presented two-step modeling procedure of tree crowns using Gaussian scale space is useful to automatically detect individual trees from VHR satellite images for at least three representative cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]