Pasture Trials

It's been a while... Coming soon, the team at CSIRO are about to do some field pasture trials at their CSIRO Chiswick site. The trials will collect a range of data including TLS, Rover Ultrasound and Radar as well as digital RGB imagery. Exciting times ahead!

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.

Recent publications

1) Who knew? A five-parameter model for calibrating the Dual Waveform Echidna Lidar? That’s what it took to cover the range from 1 m and beyond, thanks to telescopic effects that decrease the signal from midrange (10-12 m) toward the instrument and Lambert’s Law, which decreases the signal from midrange to far range. See the fit in a new Sensors article by Zhan Li et al.

And even though it's not really a DWEL article...

2) Road trip! Attaching a SICK lidar and an active optical sensor to their 4-wheel drive SUV, Michael Schaefer and Dave Lamb recently cruised through a tall fescue pasture, mapping biomass from height and NDVI. You can read how they did it in their recent article in Remote Sensing.

And there are plenty more DWEL related publications over at the TLSIIG website. Thanks to Alan for these neat article intros!

Himalayans in the Mist

A little bit of eye candy to start the week off on a good note!

This is an image produced from a scan taken a while ago at the Arboretum here in Canberra. The image is produced from the intensity information recorded from the 1556nm laser.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! All the best for 2016.

We have been a bit quiet on here in the past few months but we have a big 2016 planned so stay tuned...

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!

DWEL in the TERN e-Newsletter

DWEL has recently featured in the TERN e-Newsletter. The article can be seen here:
An Echidna from Boston

DWEL & Zebedee at Canberra Arboretum

A new collaborative project between CSIRO and the Australian National University has launched at the National Arboretum Canberra. The project aims to use 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. The arboretum is home to more than 48,000 trees including rare, endangered and symbolic trees from Australia and around the world. 

National Arboretum Location

Scanning at Tumbarumba

Our team from CSIRO recently we visited the TERN supersite at Tumbarumba in NSW to complete two days of scanning with DWEL. 
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 9 locations with DWEL (aka Super Echidna) that have been scanned using the original Echidna in previous years gone by. We were successfully able to locate all of the original scanning locations (even in the snow) and the scans were a huge success, a sample is displayed below.
While on-site, we also established a core 1 ha for TERN Supersites, a plot that will be completely inventoried, with tree DBH's, hemispherical photography, LAI and other vegetation structural measurements paving the way for potentially of many DWEL scanning trips to come.

Tumbarumba EE DWEL Scan

Tumbarumba SE GoPro Photosynth 


tern tumbarumba - dwel scan at the se corner by mickschaef13 on photosynth

DWEL and VegNet in the snow

The new DWEL 'Echidna' lidar scanning the snow covered landscape at the Tumbarumba Wet Eucalypt SuperSite in NSW; and abvoe: a sample scan from the echidna at the site (images courtesy of CSIRO / TERN's AusCover, Ozflux team of Michael Schaefer, Eva VanGorsel & Guy Byrne)

DWEL Scanning at Mulligan's Flat

Four small monitoring sites have been scanned using the DWEL at Mulligan's Flat nature reserve situated in north-eastern Gunghalin on the northern side of Canberra, adjacent to the ACT/NSW border. The four sites are the first to be scanned in Australia using the new Australian DWEL instrument. A first look at one of the scans is shown below as well as photo-panorama of the site.

Mulligan's Flat Site #2

Mulligan's Flat Site #2 Photosynth

mulligan's flat 2 by mickschaef13 on photosynth

DWEL to feature in 3D Film

On Thursday 5th June, DWEL will feature in a short 3D film production for the CSIRO Discovery 3D Theatre. The film is aimed at providing school children with an insight into some of the projects that are run through CSIRO, with DWEL being one of these.
The film will feature footage of the very first field scans completed by the OzDWEL in Australia, as well as a very brief overview of how DWEL works.

It Has Arrived!

The wait is over. DWEL, Australia's dual wavelength echidna lidar has arrived at CSIRO in Canberra, ready to begin scanning. The project has been jointly funded by CSIRO and TERN AusCover to produce DWEL, one of only two such terrestrial lidar systems in the world. It contains two lasers of different wavelength that are used to create 3D images. The two lasers give maximum contrast between the green leaves and the woody vegetation within a scan, allowing researchers to derive information about the green and woody biomass levels of a forest.
Over the coming months CSIRO researcher Michael Schaefer and his team will be travelling around Australia with the DWEL scanning various vegetation ecosystems.