Laser Scanning at Tumbarumba - DWEL, Riegl VZ-400, CBL and Zebedee

Recently a team from CSIRO traveled to the TERN Flux and Supersite at Tumbarumba in NSW to complete a week of laser scanning with DWEL, a Riegl VZ-400, a Compact Biomass Lidar (CBL) and two handheld Zebedee units.

 

Figure 1. The Tumba laser scan team, from left to right, Steve Zegelin, Mark Kitchen, Will Woodgate, Eva van Gorsel, Tom Jovanovic, Mick Schaefer and Debbie Crawford.

The Tumbarumba site is located in the Bago State forest in south eastern New South Wales. The forest is classified as wet sclerophyll, the dominant species is Eucalyptus delegatensis, and average tree height is 40 m. Elevation of the site is 1200 m and mean annual precipitation is 1000 mm. 

The mission at Tumbarumba was to scan and completely characterise the core 1 ha TERN Supersite plot. This involved collecting approximately 35 Riegl scans, 150 CBL scans, 18 DWEL scans and combining around 24 scans from the two Zebedee units. At each of the Riegl scan locations, digital hemispheric photographs were also collected.

While on-site, we also collected a few hi-res Riegl Scans from a unique angle, the top of the 70 m Flux Tower! This was a herculean effort from Will and Mark to climb to the top of the tower with the laser scanner in tow, but we think that the scan data will be well worth the effort. Care was taken while at the top of the tower to scan in the footprint of the towers' hyperspectral imaging system so that we can merge the laser scan data with that of the hyperspectral imagery, this will make a very interesting data set indeed!

Figure 2. Mark and the Riegl VZ-400 perched securely at the top of the tower, and the view out over the tree canopies.