1. Panther Creek Lidar Sets and Growth Estimation
Jim Flewelling
Western Mensurationist meeting June 18-20, Vancouver, BC
Support through Agenda 2020 Technology Alliance (FS Agreement 11-JV ).

2. Outline Panther Creek Overview Yield estimates over time.
Estimating change in yield
Top height

3. 2300 ha watershed near Portland, Oregon
Douglas fir natural and planted stands. Also hemlock, cedar, grand fir, red alder, bigleaf maple.
100 m – 700 m elevation.
Extensive data.

4. Cooperative Agreement
Statement on Cooperative Watershed Research in the Panther Creek Watershed
“All data developed as part of the cooperative research in Panther Creek is considered public information and is available to anyone upon request.”
Supplemental Data Sharing Agreement.
“All parties recognize that some of the material may be of a preliminary nature and may contain errors.”

5. Remotely Sensed Data – Lidar and Phodar

6. Remotely Sensed Data – other than Lidar

7. Tree Measurement Plots
84 plots, 0.08 ha, stem mapped
Six subjectively selected
Sampling design for some
Others near soil pits.
Measurements: 2009, late in growing season; 2012, late summer or fall; 2016, before growing season.
Six plots: just two measurements.

8. Tree Measurement Plots
Down Woody Debris, 2011
Hemispherical photos, 2011

9. Other Data TLS (RSGAL, Monika Moskal and students), 2011
Center scan only: 19 plots
Center plus 3 edge scans: 27 plots
Soils: EPA (Mark Johnson)
Weather stations: OSU, Doug Maquire

10. Intermediate Results Clipped lidar plots (90 m by 90 m).
DEMs and Lidar metrics by plot.
Colocation offsets.
Yield metrics by plot.
Interpolations and extrapolations.
Delineated ITCs
Steams (RSGAL, Jeff Richardson)
Stream nodes and Stahler Stream order When are results stable enough to be usefully shared?

11. Intermediate result: Tree data
Tree sizes projected to end of growing season.
Tree sizes extrapolated back to reference year 2007.
Probabilistic mortality for trees in 2007 and 2008.
Annual interpolations: tree and/or per hectare.

12. Intermediate result: Co-location
Panther Creek:
Target coordinates assigned for plot centers.
GPS used to install plots at those targets.
Cadastral survey with expected 0.5 m accuracy.
Want to tie stem mapped tree data to lidar returns.
Find center offset (x, y) and angular offset.
Subjective decisions or subjective algorithm

13. Co-location Methodology
ALS data is the reference data set and is assumed to be correct.
Start with the cadastral determinations of plot centers.
Find the (x,y) offset to plot center and the angular adjustment needed to adjust the stem-mapped plot.
Prefer an automated approach.

14. Co-location example with largest adjustment
Plot
70 m clip.

15. Plot Ht model, L201206

16. Delineated Crowns
Field plot should be centered within the 40 m box.

17. Delineated Crowns Red circle:
16.2 m radius about cadastral plot center.
Crown centroids also shown.

18. Tree Map TREE MAP Circle: 16.2 m radius. Square: 40 m side.
9DF50 implies
Tag = 9
Sp = DF
Ht = 50 m
X : Dead
L: Leaning

19. Trees and Multi-temporal tops.
Example:
16M51~6.9
ID: 16
Height(2012)= 51 m
Free radius no higher returns up to 6.9 m

20. TREES and Multi-temporal Tops after co-locations.
Shift in Trees:
X m
Y m
Angle deg.
mse (dist) = 0.60
Mse (ht) = 0.40

21. Tree-Top Matching
Compare (Xmod, Ymod) with (TopX, TOPY), and H-tree with H-top

22. Per hectare yield predictions
Leaf-on data sets: 5 years, separate and combined.
Leaf-off data sets: 5 years separate and combined.
Dependents:
BA basal area (m2/ha)
HL lorey height (m)
VOL whole stem volumes (cvts, m3/ha(
LN_VOL natural log of VOL

23. Lidar Metrics

24. Data Means

25. Regressions, LN_VOL, Leaf-on
2007 is an outlier?

26. Regressions, LN_VOL, Leaf-off
Leaf-off : better MSEs

27. Regressions, LN_VOL, Leaf-on, Evaluate on combined data
2015 is the outlier, Why?

28. LN_VOL, Leaf-on, Cross-evaluations

29. Regressions,
Cross-evaluations,
Leaf-off LN_VOL

30. Per-hectare yield regressions
Mean-square errors are large.
Differences between data sets can not be ignored.
Species inference should help.

31. General Option for Growth
Y = Predicted Y2 – Predicted Y1
With separate regressions, Y1 and Y2
With a common regression.
With a common regression plus offset.
Y = f(X)
Y = f(X1 ,X2 )

32. One growth result for volume
Predict Volume to 2015.
Lidar data 2010/07 and 2015/06.
Model: V = exp(b0 + b1 Elev2 +b2 PC2) exp(a0 + a1 Elev1 +a2 PC1)
Results V has mean = 70.8 m3. StDev 48.9 RMSE = (6.5% of variance explained)

33. Top height
Top height often defined as the expectation of a protocol similar to: average height of n largest diameter trees on a plot of a specified size (Rennolls, 1978, Garcia, 1998).
Similar concept invoked here: On lidar plot, identify 25 possible tree tops. Calculate mean of the nine tallest.

34. Lidar top height increment
201506
Tallest nine crown tops.
Some outliers
due to changes in top selection

35. Tree height errors are small
If we identify and follow highest lidar points on individual trees, errors in implied growth are usually less than one year’s growth.
Extreme example follows
plot , tree 13
Douglas fir with 165 cm diameter.

38. High point on a single tree
Year
Month x y z h
2007 09
-.36
7.23
393.13
67.43 12
-.62
7.62
393.23
67.26
2009 03
-.67
7.21
393.28
67.49
2010
0.01
7.36
67.64 07
-.84
6.79
393.36
67.73
2011 04
-.24
7.14
392.99
67.37
2012
-.74
6.93
393.43
67.76 06
0.19
7.42
392.96
67.36
-.98
7.00
393.67
67.88
09G
-.81
6.70
393.61
68.02
2015
-.83
7.67
393.72
67.66
Range
0.71

39. Infer site index, averaging increments of dominant trees?
Most site curves can be displayed as: family of h versus h.
Mean h and h for dominant trees in a stand can be found from successive lidar flights.
Assign site index to stands or parts of stands?

40. Synergy for Multitemporal Lidar
Two acquisitions (with field data).
Estimate height growth and site index.
Use site index as an independent variable in estimating yield.

41. Thank you
Special thanks to George McFadden, David Marshall, Steve Reutebuch
Bob McGaughey, Connie Harrington, Van Kane, Qi Chen,, Russ Faux,
Monika Moskal, and all Panther Creek participants.