A Review on the Use of LiDAR Remote Sensing for Forest Landscape Restoration

• Published in: Concepts and Applications of Remote Sensing in Forestry
• Main Author: Mazlan S.M.; Jaafar W.S.W.M.; Kamarulzaman A.M.M.; Saad S.N.M.; Ghazali N.M.; Adrah E.; Maulud K.N.A.; Omar H.; Teh Y.A.; Dzulkifli D.; Mahmud M.R.
• Format: Book chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Springer Nature 2023
• Online Access: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85163514670&doi=10.1007%2f978-981-19-4200-6_3&partnerID=40&md5=53118a4ea58c088dd06e3d117d417f08

Forest landscape restoration (FLR) is the process where vegetation is recovering in terms of its forest traits, ecosystem functionality, climate change mitigation, building up human livelihoods, and well-being in deforested and degraded forest landscapes by promoting accelerated forest regrowth. Several countries within the Global Partnership of FLR have made ambitious pledges to promote FLR globally and to restore at least 350 million ha of degraded and deforested lands by 2030 worldwide. FLR accountability has been limited to the schematic quantification of how much the land area in the forest has been restored and how many trees have been replanted for conservation purposes. Natural regeneration, old-growth forests, and mixed-species plantations of different types of species are some of the FLR strategies. Monitoring the outcome of complex forest restoration efforts requires appropriate methods and sophisticated tools. The logical procedures are by distinguishing the different forest cover types across different forest landscapes and second by identifying their respective values to ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation. Canopy structural attributes are one of the most important parameters that can act both, distinguishing the forest cover types and indicator to the forest respective values. Traditional assessments rely heavily on field-based inventory, which is cost-prohibitive and difficult to track a million hectares scale progress. Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) remote sensing has emerged as a great alternative to monitoring forest structure, function, and composition. With the ability to penetrate the forest canopy it allows an accurate measurement of structural canopy parameters along with the vertical profile. This paper will review the trends of FLR and the use of LiDAR remote sensing technology to monitor forest restoration outcomes towards achieving sustainable forest management practices. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022.