DJI L2 / DJI L3: Drone LiDAR Forest Representation Comparison

Overview: This dataset contains drone laser scanning (DLS) point clouds captured with the DJI M300 L2 and DJI M400 L3 sensors using the DJI D-RTK 3 base station. Point clouds were generated in DJI Terra V5.1.0 as .las files and were clipped to the extent of three 85 m by 85 m plots, over two spacing trials - row (Figure 1.a) and Nelder (Figure 1.b) - and mature natural forest conditions (Figure 1.c). These plots were located approximately 60 km east of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada within the coastal western-hemlock forest zone (49.26°N, -122.56°E). Metadata: All drone flights were conducted at an altitude of 80 m above ground height, following a digital elevation model, at a flight speed of 8 m/s. The L2 sensor was operated with 75% overlap between flight lines. Due to the wider field of view of the L3, it was flown with 80% side overlap to achieve a similar number of flight lines. The DJI L3 offers the ability to adjust the acquisition pulse-repetition frequency (PRF), reducing the sampling rate to increase the strength of each pulse to potentially increase the number of resolvable returns per-pulse. Due to this each plot was captured once with the L2 (that did not offer the ability to adjust PRF) and three times with the L3 resulting in the following acquisitions: L2 240khz L3 100khz L3 350khz L3 1000khz This information is included within the name structure of each .las file in the following format:'{sensor}_{altitude}_{flight_speed}_{PRF}_{overlap}_{plot}_clip.las' Additional Notes: The coordinates used to generare the transects displayed within the publication associated with this dataset (Fig. 6) are taken from the plot's lower left coordinate along the x-axis and following y-axis coordinate for: Row Plot: '5456827.5' Natural Plot: '5456790.5'