Previously glaciated landscapes often share similar surficial characteristics, including large areas of exposed bedrock, blankets of till deposits, and alluvium-floored valleys. These materials play significant roles in geologic and hydrologic resources, geohazards, and landscape evolution; however, the vast extents of many previously glaciated landscapes have rendered comprehensive, detailed f…
Tightly-coupled sensor orientation, i.e. the simultaneous processing of temporal (GNSS and raw inertial) and spatial (image and lidar) constraints in a common adjustment, has demonstrated significant improvement in the quality of attitude determination with small inertial sensors. This is particularly beneficial in kinematic laser scanning on lightweight aerial platforms, such as drones, which …
Accurately defining and isolating 3D tree space is critical for extracting and analyzing tree inventory attributes, yet it remains a challenge due to the structural complexity and heterogeneity within natural forests. This study introduces TreeisoNet, a suite of supervised deep neural networks tailored for robust 3D tree segmentation across natural forest environments. These networks are specif…
Supervised deep learning algorithms have recently achieved state-of-the-art performance in the classification, segmentation and analysis of 3D LiDAR point cloud data in a wide-range of applications and environments. One of the main downsides of deep learning-based approaches is the need for extensive training datasets, i.e. LiDAR point clouds that have been annotated for target tasks by human e…
3D reconstruction is a long-standing research topic in the photogrammetric and computer vision communities; although a plethora of open-source and commercial solutions for 3D reconstruction have been released in the last few years, several open challenges and limitations still exist. Undoubtedly, deep learning algorithms have demonstrated great potential in several remote sensing tasks, includi…
Several industrial and commercial bulk material management applications rely on accurate, current stockpile volume estimation. Proximal imaging and LiDAR sensing modalities can be used to derive stockpile volume estimates in outdoor and indoor storage facilities. Among available imaging and LiDAR sensing modalities, the latter is more advantageous for indoor storage facilities due to its abilit…
In the view of climate change, understanding and managing effects on coastal areas and adjacent cities is essential. Permanent Laser Scanning (PLS) is a successful technique to not only observe notably sandy coasts incidentally or once every year, but (nearly) continuously over extended periods of time. The collected point cloud observations form a 4D point cloud data set representing the evolu…
The ATLAS sensor onboard the ICESat-2 satellite is a photon-counting lidar (PCL) with a primary mission to map Earth's ice sheets. A secondary goal of the mission is to provide vegetation and terrain elevations, which are essential for calculating the planet's biomass carbon reserves. A drawback of ATLAS is that the sensor does not provide reliable terrain height estimates in dense, high-closur…
Thermal mapping of buildings can be one approach to assess the insulation, which is important in regard to upgrade buildings to increase energy efficiency and for climate change adaptation. Personal laser scanning (PLS) is a fast and flexible option that has become increasingly popular to efficiently map building facades. However, some measurement systems do not include sufficient colorization …
Tree species characterise biodiversity, health, economic potential, and resilience of an ecosystem, for example. Tree species classification based on remote sensing data, however, is known to be a challenging task. In this paper, we study for the first time the feasibility of tree species classification using high-density point clouds collected with an airborne close-range multispectral laser s…