Terrestrial laser scanning - RIEGL VZ-1000, individual tree point clouds and cylinder models, Belgian hedgerows and tree rows

Terrestrial laser scans were acquired for 69 trees (Quercus robur: 39 trees; Alnus glutinosa: 19 trees; Betula pendula: 11 trees) in hedgerows and tree rows in agricultural lands in Flanders, Belgium. We used a RIEGL VZ-1000 terrestrial laser scanner (RIEGL Laser Measurement Systems GmbH, Austria) with a beam divergence of 0.35 mrad operating in the infrared (wavelength 1550 nm) with a range up to 1000 m. We scanned leaf-off and all recorded variables are valid for overbark measurements. Individual trees were manually extracted from the co-registered point cloud in RiSCAN PRO software (provided by RIEGL). To the extracted trees, quantitative structure models (QSM) were fitted. We used the QSMs to derive branch length (m), total wood volume (m³) and merchantable wood volume (m³, using only cylinders with diameter > 7 cm). From the point clouds, we extracted the tree structural features such as crown projection (m²), maximum crown diameter (m) and tree height (m). Biomass expansion factors (BEF) were calculated by dividing total tree volume to merchantable tree volume. We expressed the age dependency of the BEF values via non-linear regression models. See Van Den Berge et al. (2021) for further information (DOI: 10.1007/s12155-021-10250-y).