Evaluation of a Smartphone App for Forest Sample Plot Measurements

Forests

Mikko Vastaranta²  Eduardo González Latorre²  Ville Luoma²  Ninni Saarinen²  Markus Holopainen²  Juha Hyyppä¹ 

[1] Centre of Excellence in Laser Scanning Research, National Land Survey of Finland/Finnish Geospatial Research Institute FGI, P.O. Box 84, Helsinki FI-00521, Finland; E-Mail:;Department of Forest Sciences, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 27, Helsinki FI-00014, Finland; E-Mails:

关键词: forest mensuration;    forest technology;    GIS;    forest inventory;    remote sensing;    forest management planning;   

DOI  :  10.3390/f6041179

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

We evaluated a smartphone app (TRESTIMA^TM) for forest sample plot measurements. The app interprets imagery collected from the sample plots using the camera in the smartphone and then estimates forest inventory attributes, including species-specific basal areas (G) as well as the diameter (D_gM) and height (H_gM) of basal area median trees. The estimates from the smartphone app were compared to forest inventory attributes derived from tree-wise measurements using calipers and a Vertex height measurement device. The data consist of 2169 measured trees from 25 sample plots (32 m × 32 m), dominated by Scots pine and Norway spruce from southern Finland. The root-mean-square errors (RMSEs) in the basal area varied from 19.7% to 29.3% and the biases from 11.4% to 18.4% depending on the number of images per sample plot and image shooting location. D_gM measurement bias varied from −1.4% to 3.1% and RMSE from 5.2% to 11.6% depending on the tree species. Respectively, H_gM bias varied from 5.0% to 8.3% and RMSE 10.0% to 13.6%. In general, four images captured toward the center of the plot provided more accurate results than four images captured away from the plot center. Increasing the number of captured images per plot to the analyses yielded only marginal improvement to the results.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.