Combinatorial Image Analysis

The management and planning of forests presumes the availability of up-to-date information on their current state. The relevant pa-rameters like tree species, diameter of the bowl in defined heights, tree heights and positions are usually represented by a forest in-ventory. In order to allow the collection of these inventory parameters, an approach aiming on the integration of a terrestrial laser scanner and a high resolution panoramic camera has been developed. The integration of these sensors provides geometric informa-tion from distance measurement and high resolution colour and texture information from the panoramic images. In order to enable a combined evaluation, in the first processing step a coregistration of both data sets is required. Afterwards geometric quantities like position and diameter of trees can be derived from the LIDAR data, whereas fuzzy texture parameters as derived from the high reso-lution panoramic imagery can be applied for tree species recognition