Airborne laser scanning based stand level management inventory in Finland.

Abstract

In Finland, a new ALS based stand level management inventory was developed during last few years. The system is based on area based approach of ALS data. Additionally, the spectral and texture features of the aerial images are utilized in order to improve the separation of the tree species. The species-specific stand attributes are simultaneously estimated with a nearest neighbour imputation. The new airborne laser scanning based stand level management inventory system has been successful. During just a few years almost all actors of practical forestry have modified their inventory and planning systems to be compatible with the new inventory procedure which will cover almost 3 000 000 hectares in 2011. This paper describes the background, development and practical application of this inventory system.