Forest Stand Height Estimation Using Ziyuan-3 Tri-Stereo Imagery and Lidar

Forest stand height is one of the most important tree measurement metrics in forest inventory. Airborne LiDAR is likely to be a preferred technology for acquiring high-quality forest stand height to support forest survey and management, but the cost is much higher if being used to monitor the changes of forest stand height in time series. In this study, we use ZIYUAN-3 (ZY-3) tri-stereo imagery to create photogrammetric digital surface models (DSM) by dense image matching methods and LiDAR data to derive the digital terrain models (DTM). Forest stand height can be derived from ZY3-lidar CHM which is produced by subtracting the lidar DTM from the ZY-3 photogrammetric DSM. The forest stand height map is validated by the systematic LiDAR CHM plot. The result shows that ZY-3 tri-stereo imagery can be used for forest stand height mapping.