Extraction of Tree Crowns and Heights Using LIDAR Data

Nowadays LIDAR data is widely used in different field and provides a good means to collect information on forest stands. Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) is active remote sensing which uses laser lights to strike features and record the reflected pulses to generate the 3D model of objects and offers another source of information for tree detection. This paper presents Inverse Watershed segmentation, a new method for tree detection, where individual trees are detected based on the densities of high points which distinctively separates crown centers from crown edges. This method treat raster like a watershed using focal flow to determine local maxima (tree heights) and watershed delineation (tree crowns).