Handbook on Advances in Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems | springerprofessional.de

Springer Professional

Top

2017 | Book

Read chapter Read first chapter

Handbook on Advances in Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems

Paradigms and Applications in Forest Landscape Modeling

Authors: Margarita N. Favorskaya, Lakhmi C. Jain

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Book Series : Intelligent Systems Reference Library

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Login to get access

About this book

This book presents the latest advances in remote-sensing and geographic information systems and applications. It is divided into four parts, focusing on Airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) and Optical Measurements of Forests; Individual Tree Modelling; Landscape Scene Modelling; and Forest Eco-system Modelling.

Given the scope of its coverage, the book offers a valuable resource for students, researchers, practitioners, and educators interested in remote sensing and geographic information systems and applications.

Advertisement

Table of Contents

Frontmatter

Chapter 1. Innovations in Remote Sensing of Forests

Abstract

Nowadays, a remote sensing of forests is represented by three conventional types of shooting, such as the spaceborne, airborne, and terrestrial. Recently additional studies, such as the Unmanned Airborne Vehicles (UAVs) laser scanning including nano-UAV, micro-UAV, and mini-UAV (as a part of the airborne laser scanning) and the mobile laser scanning and hand-held mobile laser scanning (as a part of the terrestrial laser scanning), became available. Each type has own purposes and pros and cons. A fusion of such scaled data in a single software tool is the innovative task with a promising future. However, a process of fusion is not trivial because of different scale representation of data. Also, a wide coverage of areas leads to difficulties in the big data processing. The material of the book is mainly based on the airborne and terrestrial algorithms.

Margarita N. Favorskaya, Lakhmi C. Jain

Airborne LiDAR and Optical Measurements of Forest

Frontmatter

Chapter 2. Overview of LiDAR Technologies and Equipment for Land Cover Scanning

Abstract

The land cover of the Earth’s surface impacts strongly on the climate and environment. Precise monitoring of land cover plays the significant role in the management of the natural resources and planning humanity development. In this sense, a remote sensing is an indispensable tool for study and prediction the global, regional, and local ecological issues. A remote sensing implies the use of satellite, airborne, and terrestrial shootings or their combination. In this book, the airborne and terrestrial shootings are discussed as the factors that contribute greatly in the study of the natural resources. Both types of shooting are based on the laser scanning of areas, using the LiDAR technologies. The terrestrial shooting is executed by the stationary (with a tripod use) and mobile laser scanning systems (using the cars, trams, or ships). At last decades, the laser scanning based on the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) started to be applied. In this chapter, an overview of the LiDAR techniques and equipment for the different types of laser scanning is given.

Margarita N. Favorskaya, Lakhmi C. Jain

Chapter 3. Software Tools for Terrain and Forest Modelling

Abstract

Huge amount of data obtained from airborne, terrestrial, and mobile laser scanners require the suitable software tools for storing and analyzing the data in order to gain the required results. The development of software tools for the LiDAR data processing that began since 1980s is not trivial due to the high requirements for hardware, effective algorithms, real-time rendering of realistic scenes, containing millions of primary elements. Also, a forest scene simulation based on a procedural modelling evolves successfully as a demanded direction in design of virtual worlds, computer games, and movies. Among the great variety of software tools, some packages and platforms, such as Terrasolid, ArcGIS, Xfog, SpeedTree, forge ahead. All packages are developed persistently, with appearance new versions periodically. However, a choice of a software tool’s version depends strongly from a solving task and the resources of organization. Inside the commercial products, free software with the limited functionality is supported as a way to understand their necessity in the future projects of the end-users.

Margarita N. Favorskaya, Lakhmi C. Jain

Chapter 4. Data Fusion for Evaluation of Woodland Parameters

Abstract

The airborne shooting provides different types of information including the Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) data, hyperspectral/multispectral/digital photography shooting data, and additional information about parameters of a shooting. The proposed generalized flowchart for data fusion of the airborne laser scanning, imaging spectroscopy, and imaging photography involves three levels of processing, i.e., a preprocessing level, a level of canopy modelling and evaluation, and a level of segmentation of individual trees, including the measurements and computation of indirect parameters. Data fusion promotes the accurate direct and indirect measurements. However, difficulties of image stitching because of the parallax effect lead to the distortions between the ground truth 3D LiDAR coordinates and 2D coordinates in imagery. The proposed method for fusion of the LiDAR and digital photography data provides an accurate segmentation of individual tree crowns in order to receive the reliable biomass measurements. The boundaries and textures were improved in optical images by application of shearlets and higher-order active contour model. This permits to evaluate tree crowns in a plane more accurately. The obtained area measurements of the tree crowns are promising and coincide with the expert estimations, providing the accuracy 92–96%.

Margarita N. Favorskaya, Lakhmi C. Jain

Individual Tree Modelling

Frontmatter

Chapter 5. Tree Modelling in Virtual Reality Environment

Abstract

In this chapter, various approaches for individual tree modelling are considered, among which the L-systems are prevailed. The fundamentals of the L-systems are situated in one of sub-sections. Usually a modelling, using the L-systems, means a viewpoint of a scene from the Earth’s surface. The modelling results based only on the L-systems cannot provide good realistic virtual interpretation. However, a compact storage of individual tree in mathematical form has also a great meaning, especially during a modelling of the forest virtual scene. Some methods of realistic modelling are discussed in this chapter. Two principally different types of trees, the broad-leaved and the coniferous, have the own specialties of modelling. Notice that a conifer branching with leaves has more complex structure in comparison to a broad-leaved branching. At the ending of this chapter, some results received by use of the designed experimental software tool TreesEditor, v. 1.04 are presented.

Margarita N. Favorskaya, Lakhmi C. Jain

Chapter 6. Realistic Tree Modelling

Abstract

The main idea of the realistic tree modelling is to create the algorithm, utilizing the ground-truth data of a laser scanning during the virtual modelling. The reasonable approach deals with voxelization that evaluates a density of points in order to represent 3D grid cells as the high-density, middle-density, and zero-density structures. This permits to make the hypotheses about the individual tree shapes and a tree distribution in the forest. The promising techniques, such as space colonization algorithm, graph-based modelling, self-organizing tree modelling, and inverse procedural modelling, are discussed in details. The shape, geometric, and structural measures help to estimate the obtained modelling results. The experiments show that a shape distance between a modelling tree and a sample tree influences on the similarity significantly. The best results were received using the space colonization algorithm and inverse procedural modelling.

Margarita N. Favorskaya, Lakhmi C. Jain

Landscape Scene Modelling

Frontmatter

Chapter 7. Digital Modelling of Terrain Surface

Abstract

The digital terrain modelling is a crucial issue in visualization of the forestry and urban areas. Among the digital evaluation, surface, and terrain models, the last ones play the significant role in the GIS applications. The challenges of a terrain modelling lead to the development of complex artificial and statistical methods that include a densification of the LiDAR point cloud, a filtering for extraction of the ground and non-ground points, and an interpolation for generation of the bare Earth’s surface. The wide spectrum of methods from each category permit to chose the acceptable solution in practice. However, such conventional way is more available for “heavy weighted” software tools, representing in Chap. 3. The future investigations deal with the design of “light weighted” software tools for unmanned aerial and ground vehicles with a reasonable relation between the accuracy estimators of the models and their computational cost.

Margarita N. Favorskaya, Lakhmi C. Jain

Chapter 8. Texturing of Landscape Scenes

Abstract

The efficient texturing and rendering of vegetation is a crucial problem for enhancing of the landscape scenes. The realistic visualization is a challenging problem due to a huge amount of information even for the individual tree. In recent years, the geometry-based and image-based approximations as the main approaches have developed and demonstrated their possibilities in many applications. The explicit and induced surface parameterizations lay in the basis of a texture mapping. A model of multi-resolution level of details is the well-known method that is an alternative to a polygonal modelling of the natural objects. The basic idea is that the highly detailed models do not always need to be presented in full details, especially in far-distance levels. The reasonable approaches for modelling of the digital Earth’ surface and individual trees including other vegetation are analyzed in details in this chapter.

Margarita N. Favorskaya, Lakhmi C. Jain

Chapter 9. Large Scene Rendering

Abstract

Large scene rendering causes many issues, including the algorithmic support and software/hardware implementation. The Level Of Details (LOD) architecture is the basis of terrain and vegetation rendering. The texturing techniques are strongly connected with a category of the LOD algorithm. Multi-texturing, clipmaps, and virtual texturing are the main methods, applying in the LOD algorithms. The classification of the forest rendering techniques demonstrates a great variety of methods that were developed actively since 1990s. The realistic leaves and grass rendering in the nearest LOD are the special issues to that ought to be given a lot of attention respect to the current situation in computer graphics. The realistic lighting and shadow mapping technique are also in the focus of consideration.

Margarita N. Favorskaya, Lakhmi C. Jain

Chapter 10. Scene Rendering Under Meteorological Impacts

Abstract

The rendering of the large landscape scenes is impossible without simulation of meteorological impacts and atmospheric phenomena. Four types of the meteorological impacts, such as wind, fog, rain, and snow, are discussed in this chapter. Additionally, the water surfaces and cloud simulation are considered. Great variety of methods can be classified as the physical-based, computer-based, and hybrid approaches. In this chapter, it is shown that many natural impacts are successfully described by the Navier-Stokes equations. The main goal of the computer-based methods is to provide the real-time implementation to the prejudice of the realistic rendering and modelling accuracy. Nowadays, the hybrid methods become popular in virtual reality and computer games, likewise in forest monitoring and inventory.

Margarita N. Favorskaya, Lakhmi C. Jain

Forest Ecosystem Modelling

Frontmatter

Chapter 11. Lighting and Shadows Rendering in Natural Scenes

Abstract

In natural scene rendering, the light is the most important factor. The global lighting models are based on the reflection and diffusion of light on the surfaces of objects. The lighting environment can be considered as a composition of the outgoing radiance due to the direct lighting from the sky and the reflection of skylight of the ground, the outgoing radiance due to the direct Sun lighting, and the outgoing radiance due to the indirect lighting from the Sun though neighbour leaves. Also, the bidirectional reflectance distribution functions for different types of materials can be designed using physically-based approach. In this chapter, some models, such as Lambertian surfaces, Phong’s reflectance model, Blinn-Phong’s reflectance model, and microfacet models, are discussed. In spite of a shadowing is still an expensive component, the virtual environment without shadows cannot be realistic. Some hard and soft shadow techniques, suitable for the natural scene rendering, are represented in the chapter.

Margarita N. Favorskaya, Lakhmi C. Jain

Chapter 12. Modelling of Forest Ecosystems

Abstract

The main goal of the forest ecosystems’ modelling is to develop such approaches that can merge the general nature of processing models with the precision and predictive power of the empirical models. The long-term prediction of forest growth plays the significant role in a legal forest management. Some attempts to develop the prototype systems for data analysis and decision-making at forest enterprise level are implemented. However, this complicated scope requires the coordinated efforts of biologists, mathematicians, and programmers. The current situation is that the good biological and rendering models exist separately. In future, the generalized modelling ought to combine the influence of soil resources, also atmospheric, meteorological, and human impacts on the forest life-cycle with the realistic modelling and rendering of large-scale forests in the short-term and long-term frameworks.

Margarita N. Favorskaya, Lakhmi C. Jain

Title: Handbook on Advances in Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems
Authors: Margarita N. Favorskaya
Lakhmi C. Jain
Copyright Year: 2017
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-52308-8
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-52306-4
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52308-8

Premium Partner