With TLS data you can analyze whole forest site.
Automated method for basic tree parameters can be fast and precise.
Analyze how tree affecting it neighborhood.
Extraction of terrain with automated methods.
Whole application is free for all users.
Tool for processing point clouds from forest environment.
Looking for software tool to analyse your TLS data? You just find one! We are glad to present you open-source software application for lidar data segmentation, visualization, measurement and export of various tree parameters. Let’s start with image gallery and enjoy insight into old-growth forest where this application serve for studying forest structure and dynamic in 3D space. Feel free to download and test it from download page and leave comment or sugestion at our forum. We are using also ticket system for improvements and bug report.
The 3D Forest Project started in year 2010 at Department of Forest Ecology of The Silva Tarouca Research Institute. In cooperation with Department of Geoinformation Technologies of Mendel University in Brno. Increasing need for analyzing real three-dimensional data from forest environment was apparent and widely acknowledged across numerous research questions in forestry and forest ecology. After extensive search for the best possible approach for acquiring and processing 3D data we found terrestrial laser scanning as the best data for our needs. The only missing piece was the powerful but user friendly processing tool, so we decided to create one by ourself – the 3D Forest.
We are happy to announce that we just published a new paper about processing utra-high-density drone lidar data for area-wide mapping of individual trees using 3D Forest. The paper received publicity also on ForestGEO’s Twitter and Facebook pages.
We have updated the Wiki User’s Guide. We believe that the new user manual better describes the functionality of 3D Forest and will be useful for all and especially for new users of the 3D Forest. At the same time we are working on updates of some 3D Forest dialog windows to be more intuitive. It will be part of the 0.51 release. Comming soon!
The article introducing 3D Forest (Trochta et al. 2017) is among the top 10% most cited PLOS ONE papers published in 2017! Thank you for your interest!!
Our application is free for all users. Thanks to licence GPL v3 we can publish our work with garanty that user will never pay for this piece of code.
During our mission we have collected a big amount of data from forest environment. Our datasets has area at least 1 ha on more than 5 plots. If you are intersted in cooperation feel free to contact us.
Krůček M., Král K., Cushman KC, Missarov A., Kellner J.R., 2020. Supervised Segmentation of Ultra-High-Density Drone Lidar for Large-AreaMapping of Individual Trees. Remote Sensing 12, 3260: 2-16, doi:10.3390/rs12193260
Kellner, J. R., Armston, J., Birrer, M., Cushman, K. C., Duncanson, L., Eck, C., … & Trochta, J. (2019). New opportunities for forest remote sensing through ultra-high-density drone lidar. Surveys in Geophysics, 1-19.
Liang, Xinlian, et al. “International benchmarking of terrestrial laser scanning approaches for forest inventories.” ISPRS journal of photogrammetry and remote sensing 144 (2018): 137-179.
Krůček, M., Trochta, J., Cibulka, M., & Král, K. (2019). Beyond the cones: How crown shape plasticity alters aboveground competition for space and light—Evidence from terrestrial laser scanning. Agricultural and forest meteorology, 264, 188-199.
Trochta J, Krůček M, Vrška T, Král K (2017) 3D Forest: An application for descriptions of three-dimensional forest structures using terrestrial LiDAR. PLoS ONE 12(5): e0176871. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0176871
Explore possibilities of our application on following pictures.
GUI of 3D Forest
competition for light in 3D
scannig on the edge
From the pointcloud ...
... through processing ...
... to measure individual trees
two tree species in scan
20x20 m sample of Žofín forest plot
colonization of canopy gap
Velká Pleš site
DBH and tree heights
planar projections of trees
From the pointcloud ...
... through segmentation ...
... to measure individuals
separation of terrain and vegetation
individual trees after automatic segmentation
automatic measurements with instant visualisation
QSM of trees (yelow cilinders)
from pointcloud through QSM to wood quality assortment
tree measurements ...
DBH and tree heights
concave hulls of trees
planar projections of trees
Planar projections of 1 ha plot
Velká Pleš site
TLS of 10 ha oak woodland
Airborne and terestrial scans
Ranšpurk site with segmented trees with DBh greater than 1 cm
Example of crown hull created by sections
Convex hulls of crown on Ranšpurk site
Žofín forest site sample with trees automatically segmented
Žofín forest site sample with trees in concave hull
Žofín forest site sample with trees in convex hull
top view to the concave hulls on Ranšpurk
Top view on convex hull
Žofín forest site sample with in convex hull of crowns
Žofín forest site sample with convex hull of crowns
Convex hull of crowns with planar projection - space occupation
Jan scanning Wind River
scannig on the edge
Ranšpurk data collection
Boubín forest after disturbance
Kamil operating scanner on Velká Pleš site
Boubin forest in spring campaign
Jan and Dušan scanning on Velká Pleš site
In field we work (Žofín site)
Žofín site
Get the latest version of 3D Forest, download testing data to play with and discover all features of our application.
Meet our team.
Senior researcher at VUKOZ research institute, Department of Forest Ecology. Main interests: Remote sensing, Forest dynamics, development stages and patch mosaic of old-growth forest
Ph.D. student at VUKOZ research institute, Department of Forest Ecology. Student of Applied geoinformatics, Mendel University Brno Main interests: Crown modelling, light propagation, UAV data processing
Former Ph.D. student at VUKOZ research institute, Department of Forest Ecology. Student of Applied geoinformatics, Mendel University Brno Main interests: remote sensing, old growth forest dynamics, programing, forest ecology.
If you have any question, please contact us on forum or by e-mail.
