Assessing single photon LiDAR for operational implementation of an enhanced forest inventory in diverse mixedwood forests

Airborne laser scanning (ALS; LiDAR) data are an increasingly common data source for forest inventories, and approaches integrating ALS data with field plot measurements have become operational in several jurisdictions. As technology continues to evolve, different LiDAR sensors can provide new opportunities to incorporate LiDAR data into forest inventory workflows. Single photon LiDAR (SPL) enables efficient, large area data acquisition and merits further investigation for forest inventory applications. Herein, we investigated the capacity of leaf-on SPL data, combined with 269 field plots, for estimating forest inventory attributes in the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence mixedwood forests of southern Ontario, Canada. Inventory attribute estimates were validated at the stand level using independent reference data acquired for 27 intensively sampled stands. Top height, Lorey’s height, gross total volume for merchantable stems, merchantable stem volume, basal area, quadratic mean diameter, and total aboveground biomass were estimated with a relative RMSE of 13.52%, 7.24%, 14.61%, 16.27%, 14.42%, 12.25%, and 11.72%, respectively. Relative bias was < 1% for all attributes except top height (10.34%), merchantable volume (3.37%), and basal area (1.68%). Accuracy and bias varied by forest type and stand-level validation was important for assessing model performance in different stand conditions. SPL data can be used to generate accurate, area-based forest inventories in mixedwood forests that have a multitude of tree species and complex forest management histories.