7th Workshop on Forest Fire Management - EARSeL, European ...

ASSESSING CRITICAL FUEL PARAMETERS USING AIRBORNE FULL
WAVEFORM LIDAR: THE CASE STUDY OF BOSCO DELL’INCORONATA
(APULIA REGION, SOUTHERN ITALY)
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to develop the use of airborne lidar
(LIght Detection and Ranging) remote sensing for accurately and effectively
assessing fuel critical parameters, (such as closeness, height, density,
load) for both canopy and understory. The study was performed in a natural
protected area (Bosco dell’Incoronata) located in the Apulia Region
(Southern Italy). Lidar data acquisition was carried out on April 2007.
Estimates of fuel properties were compared with in-situ data collected at
the same time (more or less) as the LIDAR data acquisition.
1 - Introduction
R. Lasaponara 1 , R. Coluzzi 1 , A. Guariglia 2 ,
M. Monteleone 3 , A. Lanorte 1
1 CNR-IMAA, Tito Scalo (PZ), Italy
a.lanorte@imaa.cnr.it
2 Geocart s.r.l., Potenza, Italy
3 University of Foggia, Foggia, Italy
Airborne laser scanning is a remote sensing approach developed to obtain
a high-precision and complete vertical profile of the height of objects by a
laser pulse. Thought its efficient data sampling capabilities Airborne Laser
Scanning (ALS) has completely revolutionized the area of bathymetric and
topographic surveying. The applications of airborne ALS have been increasing
rapidly over recent years. ALS data are used for corridor mapping,
coastal and urban area monitoring, land cover classification, estimation of
forest tree height, assessment of the seasonal canopy differences, collecting
forest inventory data. Recent studies have examined the possibility of
using ground LIDAR in fuel type mapping, see for example Riano et al.
(2004), but study based on ALS are quite rare. The latest generation of airborne
ALS is the Full-Waveform (FW) scanner which offers improved capabilities
compared to the conventional system, especially in areas with close
canopy and dense vegetation. Nowadays the majority of published studies
(for different applications fields) are based on data collected by conventional
ALS. In this paper, critical fuel parameters were assessed for both
canopy and understory by combining data from FW ALS and ortophotos.
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