The structural and radiative consistency of three-dimensional tree reconstructions from terrestrial lidar

A novel methodology is proposed to reconstruct 3D tree architectures from terrestrial LiDAR (TLiDAR) scans. The methodology is robust and relatively insensitive to wind- and occlusion-induced artefacts in the 3D TLiDAR point clouds. A quantitative evaluation of structural attributes, like the vertical foliage and wood area profiles, as well as the shoot orientation distribution, was performed. Due to the difficulties of acquiring reliable and accurate estimates of these parameters in the field, an original evaluation approach was chosen that reproduces the TLiDAR scanning and subsequent tree reconstruction process in a virtual environment. In a second step the reconstructed tree models were ingested in a validated 3D radiative transfer model to simulate both their reflectance signatures (observable by space borne instruments) and directional transmission properties (measurable during field campaigns) under various spectral, illumination and tree density scenarios. The results of these evaluations confirm the appropriateness of the proposed tree reconstruction model for the generation of structurally and radiatively faithful copies of existing plant and canopy architectures.