lidR (version 2.1.4)

LAD: Leaf area density

Description

Computes a leaf area density profile based on the method of Bouvier et al. (see reference)

Usage

LAD(z, dz = 1, k = 0.5, z0 = 2)

Arguments

z

vector of positive z coordinates

dz

numeric. The thickness of the layers used (height bin)

k

numeric. is the extinction coefficient

z0

numeric. The bottom limit of the profile

Value

A data.frame containing the bin elevations (z) and leaf area density for each bin (lad)

Details

The function assesses the number of laser points that actually reached the layer z+dz and those that passed through the layer [z, z+dz] (see gap_fraction_profile). Then it computes the log of this quantity and divides it by the extinction coefficient k as described in Bouvier et al. By definition the layer 0 will always return infinity because no returns pass through the ground. Therefore, the layer 0 is removed from the returned results.

References

Bouvier, M., Durrieu, S., Fournier, R. a, & Renaud, J. (2015). Generalizing predictive models of forest inventory attributes using an area-based approach with airborne las data. Remote Sensing of Environment, 156, 322-334. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2014.10.004

See Also

gap_fraction_profile

Examples

# NOT RUN {
z = c(rnorm(1e4, 25, 6), rgamma(1e3, 1, 8)*6, rgamma(5e2, 5,5)*10)
z = z[z<45 & z>0]

lad = LAD(z)

plot(lad, type="l", xlab="Elevation", ylab="Leaf area density")
# }