Individual tree crown (ITC) techniques

• Individual tree crown (ITC) delineation: Identification, and regrouping in high spatial resolution (30-100 cm/pixel) aerial and satellite multispectral images
• Individual tree crown delineation: A valley-following approach
• Individual tree crown multispectral classification in high spatial resolution images
• Supervised classification of automatically delineated tree crowns at different spatial resolutions
• Regrouping tree crowns into forest stands (or environmental strata) and obtaining detailed information about their content

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Individual tree crown (ITC) delineation: Identification, and regrouping in high spatial resolution (30-100 cm/pixel) aerial and satellite multispectral images

Goal

The automatic or semi-automatic production of individual tree-based inventories as a goal in itself or as a necessary step in obtaining almost automatically the precise forest inventory parameters needed for sustainable forest development.

Note: Information on an individual tree basis could be useful to a variety of forestry-related tasks, from management at the landscape level to biodiversity monitoring, as input to computer models (growth, health, ...) and decision support systems, as well as, in the production of criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management success.

Research objectives

From high spatial resolution (30-100 cm/pixel) aerial and satellite multispectral images, to develop procedures, methods, and systems to:

• isolate individual tree crowns (ITC) from each other and from the background vegetation
• delineate precisely their crown boundaries
• identify their species; and finally, if needed
• regroup them into forest stands or environmental strata

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