Understanding the performance of terrestrial discrete-LIDAR for estimating the PAI of forest canopies using Monte-Carlo simulation method

The terrestrial discrete-LiDAR is a promising instrument to obtain the accurate LAI and PAI estimates of forest canopies as compared to the traditional optical methods, as it has the ability of insensitive to the observation conditions and recording the 3D structural information meanwhile. In this paper, the ability of terrestrial discrete-LiDAR for capturing the gap fraction and retrieving the PAI of forest canopies were analyzed using 14 3D forest scenes with known PAI. These estimates from the LiDAR method was compared to these from the DHP method. The ability of the LiDAR method for retrieving the gap fraction and PAI of forest canopies was discussed and concluded in the end.