Forest transportation survey based on airborne laser scanning data and GIS analyses

Abstract

The article deals with the issue of the aerial survey of forest transportation (road mapping and calculation of skidding distance), via methods of remote sensing of the Earth and geographical information system (GIS) applications.Road network mapping was carried out by the manual vectorisation of linear objects based on terrain models created from laser scanning data.Based on the roads and digital terrain model derived from airborne laser scanning data, the average skidding distance for every forest stand was calculated.An algorithm created in the ArcGIS environment was used for calculation, which fully automated the calculation of the skidding distance.The versatility of the suggested method was verified on the study area of the University Forest Enterprise of the Technical University in Zvolen.The results indicated that it is possible to identify the permanent and, under certain conditions, temporary network of forest roads from airborne laser scanning data, including the case of roads situated under tree crowns.In the area of interest less than 13% of the roads could not be identified from the airborne laser scanning data.Likewise the algorithm for skidding distance calculation also performed well.