DWEL & Zebedee at Canberra Arboretum - Part 2

Last week the bad weather finally cleared so we headed back out to the National Arboretum Canberra to collect scans a year on from the start of a collaborative project between CSIRO and the Australian National University. The project uses DWEL and Zebedee (a CSIRO handheld laser scanner) to monitor the growth, plant morphology, and health of some of the 94 small 'forests' that are planted in the arboretum. Preliminary views of the data show that several species of trees within the Arboretum have grown significantly over the year, in some cases up to 2.00m taller as well as the canopy filling out. We will now conduct scientific analysis and validation on selected trees within each of the scanned forests.

Online Visualization of your Lidar Point Clouds

I recently came across this website (Sketchfab) that allows you to upload your point clouds and visualize them online (like in this blog). You may have already seen it before, but if not I thought I would put it out there, there is only one catch, in the free account you can only upload files less than 50MB in size.
I will be using it from now on to post sample DWEL scans. Click the viewer below to see how it works!

C_Kara005_1064nm by mick.schaefer13 on Sketchfab

CBL up North

Recently a team of researchers from CSIRO traveled up to Northern QLD for a grassland biomass monitoring and satellite radar validation project. The field sites were located on the Spyglass Beef Research Facility a cattle property of approximately 100,000 hectares in size which is to be used as one of the pilot sites for the GEOGLAM-RAAP project.

Mapping out where to go next

We carried out many measurements including, soil moisture, point intercept, CBL (compact biomass lidar), destructive biomass sampling, field spectroscopy, tree structural measurements and ground cover.

Starting up the CBL for another scan.

It was very dry on the property, so more often than not the field sites didn't have much ground biomass at all, however it was a good exercise in establishing a baseline to work from and also the field protocols that we will use in the future.

Very dry and sparse vegetation courtesy being enduring 4 years of drought

Spy01 by mick.schaefer13 on Sketchfab

CSIRO OzDWEL Promo Video

This video made an appearance a at the GFOI-GOFC Biomass Meeting in Brisbane this week. So with some gentle encouraging from the TLSIIG members at the meeting I thought I would post it up here too.
The video was filmed to "promote the science" that CSIRO is currently using and was aimed at primary school aged children for education purposes. It is currently being shown at the 3D cinema in the CSIRO Discovery Center.

Thanks to the CSIRO Comms team for putting this video together.

Warra Trip - Success!

After a week of hard work trekking around the Tasmanian Warra Forests and some minor technical issues early in the week, we are very happy with all the TLS data that we collected from DWEL. I'm currently still processing all the data, but a first glance over it looks pretty good.
The rest of the science campaign also went well and luckily Peter Scarth has kept his awesome blog updated with the goings on of each day, have a look at everything we got up to http://earth.postach.io/
This GoPro panorama was taken at the 'tame' Flux tower site. Compared to the rest of the sites, this one was nice and easy to move around while carrying DWEL.


tern warra auscover cal / val trip - wtwr180 dwel scan by mickschaef13 on photosynth

Warra - DWEL back on track

After a few recurring technical issues all week, and completely dismantling DWEL, we finally have some scans of the beautiful Tasmanian Warra forest. There is some very rugged patches of forest down here, lots of ferns and very tall Eucalypts, all that thrown in with plenty of massive, decaying, fallen logs makes for fun times.
So far we've collected plenty of scans with both DWEL and Riegl as well as plant structural measurements, leaf collections using a tree climber and a shooter and UAV imeragy as well. Its shaping up to be a very good week.

Figure 1 - The trees are tall down here in Tasmania. That's an 80 m tall Flux tower that's just above the canopy!

   Figure 2 - DWEL having fun in the Warra ferns.

Figure 3 - Peter and Matt letting the Riegl TLS work its magic.

Figure 4 - The first scan from DWEL for the trip. This is an image from the 1556nm laser, unfiltered, but it looks good. Plenty more scans to come!

DWEL Headed to the Warra

DWEL is currently in transit between Canberra and Hobart, getting ready for a big week of scanning in Tasmania (see the update on the DWEL Scans Map tab).
The TERN AusCover team are heading down to the TERN Warra Supersite for a week of Cal / Val activities including Airborne Hyperspectral measures, DBH, point intercept surveys, LAI, TLS and other tree structural measurements.
On the TLS side of things, both the DWEL and Riegl VZ400 will be in action scanning a variety of plots in the Tall Eucalypt Forest. I will keep the updates coming as the week of scanning (2nd - 6th Feb) progresses!