Ground Level LiDAR as a Contributing Indicator in an Environmental Protection Application

The value attributed to the forests in developed countries has shifted from commercial wood production towards carbon reduction, habitat for wildlife, scenery and recreation. With the increasing perceived benefits came more concern and effort towards better forest management. There are many research and development initiatives aimed at effectively using the latest technologies to monitor forest environment, forest wildlife, forest incidents such as fires, illegal logging, poaching etc. This paper presents an expert system that we designed, developed and tested for forest environmental protection applications. The system includes remote sensing hubs and a central cloud server with several capabilities that are briefly presented. We detail a new approach of using Laser Imaging Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) sensors placed at ground level to acquire useful data from forest environments. Implementation details and considerations are presented together with test results obtained in a forest environment.