Comparison of conventional eight-point crown projections with LiDAR-based virtual crown projections in a temperate old-growth forest
Introduction Sight-based field measurements of tree crown projection area and canopy height are common praxis in forest science but difficult to validate. We quantified their measurement errors based on the virtual
representation of an 11-species old-growth forest provided by high-resolution terrestrial LIDAR (light detection and ranging) easurements.
Objectives Based on the expectations (a) that violations of the triangulation theory are the main error source of height measurements, and (b) that approximations of tree crowns with fixed angles are not flexible enough for irregular crown shapes in natural stands, we investigated the relative
accuracies of triangulation measurements of height of crown base (B