Quantifying Tropical Forest Stand Structure Through Terrestrial and UAV Laser Scanning Fusion.

Obtaining accurate and detailed structural forest information has been revolutionized with the emergence of laser scanning. The sampling limitations and potential of the different laser scanning platforms (e.g. TLS, UAV -LS) have, however, not been fully explored for dense tropical forests. We fused laser scanning data from the terrestrial (TLS) and drone (UA V -LS) platform for two dense tropical forest plots and calculated their vertical point density profiles to gain insight in their sampling abilities. Our results reveal the limitations of TLS to fully sample the top of the canopy of a dense tropical rainforest. We also demonstrate how multiple returns but also cheaper single returns UAV -LS systems can be applied to sample the forest structure.