Point clouds with ground point classification and individual tree segmentation of 89 northern boreal forest and tundra sites from UAV-based lidar surveys in Yakutia, Russia in 2021

This data set presents LiDAR 3D point clouds with centimetre precision. It is a collection of processed point clouds that were collected by a UAV-based laser scanner (YellowScan Mapper). The region covered is part of the Northern Boreal Forest and the Tundra-Taiga Ecotone (TTE). The aim is to map the forest structure, and in particular to segment individual trees. Additionally, mapping arctic lakes and conduct ecological studies (beavers). This allows structural and biophysical information to be derived on forest condition, structure, topography, morphology, disturbance (wildfire, thaw slumps, wind events), thermokarst lakeshore interfaces, etc. The fieldwork was planned and carried out by researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) and the North-Eastern Federal University of Yakutsk (NEFU). It took place in the late summer of 2021, from 17 July to 29 August. The principal study areas are the intramontane Oymyakon region in the Verkhoyansk mountain range near Lake Ulu, and the central-eastern Yakutian lowlands eas of the Lena river close to Yakutsk, with a slightly different ecological setting. At a multitude of sites, we pre-selected locations based on satellite data. At each site, transects at least 50 m wide and 500 m long were flown in a grid of parallel flight lines 20 m apart. At the ground level, mostly one or, in rare cases, multiple 30-metre-diameter plots were inventoried as ground reference data. The recordings were made at an altitude of 60-100 m above ground liftoff at a speed of 5 m/s, as recommended by the manufacturer. Before each flight, a GPS base station was set up to collect data for later geographic correction.