Apports et perspectives de la technologie LiDAR aéroporté pour la pratique forestière | Contributions and perspectives of airborne LiDAR technology for forestry

LiDAR is an optical remote sensing system that determines the distance to an object or to a surface by measuring the time delay between the transmission of a pulse and the detection of the reflected signal. A wide variety of applications arise from this technology which facilitate a better knowledge of land use. In forestry, airborne LiDAR systems provide, in addition to an accurate model of the relief, a 3D representation of the forest structure at various scales. This contribution presents the foundations of LiDAR technology and illustrates several forestry applications: underneath vegetation topography, canopy height and texture, vegetation delineation and stand delimitation. This contribution also outlines the potential of airborne laser scanning for forestry.