Sunday, 15 June 2014
TLSIIG Salford 2014
SALCA team head for the hills
SALCA headed north of the border into Scotland last week as part of Rachel's Royal Society project to examine forest health using remote sensing measurements. Mark, Rachel and Magdalena Smigaj, PhD student at Newcastle, braved the world-famous Scottish midges (Culicoides impunctatus) to collect SALCA data at five test plots in Aberfoyle Forest near Stirling in the Loch Lomand and the Trossachs National Park.
The project is focussed on a series of instrumented plots, run by Dr Juan Suarez from UK Forest Research, where Red Band Needle Blight, caused by the pathogen Dothistroma septosporum, has infected Scots pine plantation forestry. There is great concern about the spread of the pathogen to other species and in particular to Scots pine in remnant Caledonian forest areas. We will examine the SALCA data to determine whether the foliage in the infected trees can be identified. The UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) will fly an airborne hyperspectral imager, full waveform lidar and thermal scanner over the site in the next few days to support the project.
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| Rachel and Magdelena equipped for the midges SALCA seemed to work but how will the midges affect the point clouds? |
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| Aberfoyle Forest and the Trossachs |
Friday, 4 April 2014
Leaf-off scanning at Alice Holt
SALCA was scanning at Alice Holt, Surrey, UK, last week. The weather was showery and cold but Mark and Lucy managed to scan an Oak plot that is subject to long-term monitoring by Forest Research, and three additional plots where we will destructively sample three Oak trees in early July for woody biomass and total leaf area. We aim to test the application of SALCA for determining leaf area distributions, and the leaf-on leaf-off scans will allows us to test the use of SALCA's two wavelengths for automatic point cloud classification and separation of leaf hits from wood hits.
Eric Casella (UK Forest Research) is coordinating the experiment and he has been busy scanning the various plots with a Leica TLS. He scanned the birch tree area below in leaf-off conditions and destructively sampled three of the trees for total woody biomass. This is really the 'gold standard' for biomass validation but the work involved is truly heroic. Cutting the trees down is just the start...
Now the hard work really starts...
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| Full resolution SALCA scan in Oak plot at Alice Holt |
Eric Casella (UK Forest Research) is coordinating the experiment and he has been busy scanning the various plots with a Leica TLS. He scanned the birch tree area below in leaf-off conditions and destructively sampled three of the trees for total woody biomass. This is really the 'gold standard' for biomass validation but the work involved is truly heroic. Cutting the trees down is just the start...
Now the hard work really starts...
Friday, 21 March 2014
SALCA returns to Delamere
SALCA has returned to Delamere Forest in Cheshire to start a
year-long field campaign to monitor canopy phenology. Five plots have been
located within the forest:
Plot 1: Mixed deciduous (mainly Oak and Silver birch)
Plot 2: Sweet Chestnut
Plot 3: Common Beech
Plot 4: Mixed evergreen coniferous (Corsican pine and Scots
pine)
Plot 5: Japanese Larch (deciduous conifer)
Leaf-off measurements are nearly complete - just in time as
green buds have already started appearing in the Silver birch. Spring is a busy
time in the canopy so Mark and Lucy plan to scan frequently throughout this
period to capture the 3D characteristics of development and activity within the
canopy. The data collected at Delamere will form a significant part of Lucy's
PhD.
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| SALCA at Plot 1 |
Following
a review of the data we collected in Australia, and preparation for our
upcoming field campaigns, we have recently implemented a couple of
improvements to the instrument and scanning procedures. This has
included
introducing new filter combinatons to balance the power of the lasers
and swapping the petrol generator (which gave up on our first day at
Delamere!) with a 24v battery - this has the added benefits of being
quiet and much easier to carry!
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| Mark at Plot 3 |
Thursday, 20 February 2014
New TLS research at Forest Research
In mid January the SALCA team participated in discussions at Forest Research UK to plan a new TLS experiment to scan leaf-off and leaf-on woodland at Alice Holt, Surrey. The plan is to scan the plots in March and July and then to carry out destructive sampling to measure the wood biomass and total leaf area of a number of Oak trees. We were hosted by Eric Casella and James Morison (Forest Research) and others from University College London, University of Grenoble, France, and Tampere University of Technology (TUT), Finland
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| L to R. Andy Burt (UCL), Lucy Walker (USalford), Markku Akerblom (TUT), Rachel Gaulton (UNewcastle), Eric Casella (ForestResearch), Mark Danson (USalford), Pasi Raumonen (TUT), Mikko Kaasalainen (TUT), Mat Disney UCL), James Morison (Forest Research), Frank Hetroy (UGrenoble) |
Saturday, 21 December 2013
Royal Society Leverhulme Fellowship for Mark Danson
Late breaking news is that Mark Danson has been awarded a Royal Society Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowship to work on SALCA data processing and analysis. The award provides funding to replace Mark's teaching for a period of 12 months and will enable him to work full time on research. The work in Australia set the scene for the project and he will continue to work on SALCA related projects through to October 2014.
Press coverage of the news can be found at the following links:
Wednesday, 31 July 2013
More action from Australia
Tuesday saw us back at Karawatha Forest park to collect SALCA data along side the Riegl VZ400 and Faro instrument. In addition to the laser scanner data the the team are collecting field spectrometer data to characterise the spectral properties of leaves and bark. Sampling the upper canopy requires the use of an oversize slingshot which propels bean bag and string into the canopy; the bean bag wraps around branches and these are then pulled down for sampling - sometimes it works, and sometimes it goes wrong!
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| Steve Hancock and Andrew Burt (University College London) attempt to untangle the sling-shot string! |
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| Rachel and Mat Disney (University College London) use an ASD Fieldspec to measure leaf reflectance and transmittance |
Short clip of SALCA in action - the noise of the generator wins over the birdsong for most of the clip
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