Airborne Laser Scanning - the Status and Perspectives for the Application in the South-East European Forestry

Background and Purpose: Over the last twenty years airborne laser scanning (ALS) technology, also referred to as LiDAR, has been established in a many disciplines as a fully automated and highly efficient method of collecting spatial data. In Croatia, as well as in most countries of the South-East Europe (SEE) with the exception of Slovenia, the research on the application of ALS in forestry has not yet been conducted. Also, regional scientific and professional literature dealing with ALS application is scarce. Therefore, the main goal of this review paper is to present the ALS technology to the forestry community of SEE and to provide an overview of its potential application in forest inventory. The primary focus is given to discrete return ALS systems. Conclusions and Future Research Streams: Results presented in this paper show that the ALS technology has a significant potential for application in forest inventory. Moreover, the two-phase forest inventory based on the combination of ALS and field measurements has become a quite common operational method. Due to the expected advancement of the ALS technology, it may be presumed that ALS will have an even more important role in forestry in the future. Therefore, researches on application of ALS technology in SEE forestry are needed, primarily focusing to question of “if” and “to what extent” the ALS technology can improve the existing terrestrial method of forest inventory. Besides the application in the classical forest inventory, the option to apply it for estimation of the biomass, carbon stock, combustible matter, etc, should also be further investigated.