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LiDAR & Forest Structure

Understanding the structure of tropical rainforests is essential for uncovering how these ecosystems function and support biodiversity. At Gunung Palung National Park in Indonesian Borneo, I used terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) to create high-resolution, three-dimensional models of the forest. These detailed point clouds allowed me to capture fine-scale variation in forest structure, and reveal how differences in canopy height, vegetation density, and spatial complexity shape the habitats that animals rely on.

Gunung Palung National Park (GPNP) in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, encompasses tropical rainforest along a pronounced elevational gradient. Trails (dark black lines) access lowland forests (bottom left of the map), including peat swamp and alluvial bench forest, as well as higher-elevation forests (top right), such as upland granite and montane forest types.

In early 2022, I used a terrestrial laser scanner (FARO Focus s350) to capture high-resolution 3D scans of multiple locations across the field site at GPNP. I scanned a total of 58 locations across each of the seven unique forest types at the site, and across the entire elevational gradient. 

Each scan produces a 3D point cloud capturing the forest’s structure. From these point clouds, I extracted more than a dozen metrics describing different aspects of forest structure, including traditional measures such as mean tree height, tree diameter, and basal area, as well as more complex metrics like vegetation density, vertical distribution, and canopy gap volume.

Take a 3D fly-through of a point cloud captured at a high-elevation location at Gunung Palung National Park, showing the detail captured by LiDAR scans.

Explore how forest structure varies by forest type and elevation using metrics extracted from LiDAR point clouds.

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