Some initial results from Kim's work at Wytham

Kim has been working hard on co-registering the 370+ scans we collected from Wytham over the summer. He's managed to pull together the scans and put them into some sort of order, along the LAI2000 and 2200 data and everything else - great job! The co-registration of the scans looks pretty good so far, but is likely to improve as we use the multi-station adjustment on it. But Kim's first fly-through already looks VERY impressive - this includes scans made from the Wytham walkway and so gives a great view up and around the canopy.

As far as I know I don't think anyone has ever scanned as large a chunk of forest as this in such detail so far. The next steps will be pulling out and reconstructing the individual trees, and comparing the resulting models with the inventory data, comparing the structural information with the other ground-based measurements (PAI, LAI, gap fraction), looking at clumping, and then building the canopy radiative transfer model that will allow us to look at fAPAR and satellite signals.

An interesting corollary is the density of targets the individual scan locations 'see' in the plot. Kim has plotted the scan locations with reflectors:

6 ha plot at Wytham Woods, with the scan locations (red) and the reflectors (crosses) marked.

Each reflector is seen from a minimum at least 2 scan locations minimum, and up to 25 maximum, but mostly between 5 and 6 scan locations. This is a useful way to think about how many reflectors we need, the density of scans and so on, as we do this in more locations.