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A new approach to retrieve leaf normal distribution using terrestrial laser scanners

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Abstract

Leaf normal distribution is an important structural characteristic of the forest canopy. Although terrestrial laser scanners (TLS) have potential for estimating canopy structural parameters, distinguishing between leaves and nonphotosynthetic structures to retrieve the leaf normal has been challenging. We used here an approach to accurately retrieve the leaf normals of camphorwood (Cinnamomum camphora) using TLS point cloud data. First, nonphotosynthetic structures were filtered by using the curvature threshold of each point. Then, the point cloud data were segmented by a voxel method and clustered by a Gaussian mixture model in each voxel. Finally, the normal vector of each cluster was computed by principal component analysis to obtain the leaf normal distribution. We collected leaf inclination angles and estimated the distribution, which we compared with the retrieved leaf normal distribution. The correlation coefficient between measurements and obtained results was 0.96, indicating a good coincidence.

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Acknowledgments

The authors express their gratitude to Mr. Masayasu Maki and Mr. Amane Kuriki for their advice; Dr. Duminda Ranganath Welikanna, Dr. Alexandros Kordonis, and Dr. Chandana Dinesh for help in proofreading; Dr. Lei Lü for field data collection; and our lab members for supporting this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, C1-1-209, Kyoto Daigaku Katsura, Nishikyo-ku, Kyoto, 615-8540, Japan

    Shengye Jin

  2. Department of Civil and Earth Resources Engineering, Kyoto University, C1-1-209, Kyoto Daigaku Katsura, Nishikyo-ku, Kyoto, 615-8540, Japan

    Masayuki Tamura & Junichi Susaki

Authors
  1. Shengye Jin
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  2. Masayuki Tamura
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  3. Junichi Susaki
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Correspondence to Shengye Jin.

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The online version is available at http://www.springerlink.com

Corresponding editor: Yu Lei

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Jin, S., Tamura, M. & Susaki, J. A new approach to retrieve leaf normal distribution using terrestrial laser scanners. J. For. Res. 27, 631–638 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11676-015-0204-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11676-015-0204-z

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