Assessment of tree and crown heights of a maritime pine forest at plot level using a fullwaveform UltraViolet Lidar prototype

This study aims to determine the potential of a new lidar prototype with an ultraviolet laser and a medium footprint for retrieving forest parameters. The lidar is embedded on an ultra-light aircraft. The choice of the Landes forest in southwestern France as study area was made regarding the flat topography of the area and the stand height consistency. We chose three plots from different stands (different height characteristics) and compared the lidar derived metries to field measurements. To derive metries from lidar data, we summed the lidar waveforms within a plot and calculated derived reflectance profiles to correct the lidar signal from the occlusion effect. We then retrieve plot mean total and mean crown base heights measurement from reflectance profiles. We obtain a good consistency of the lidar measurements compared to field measurements, even if we noticed the existence of a 5 to 10% bias probably linked to the lidar sampling strategy.