Applications of Remote and Proximal Sensing for Improved Precision in Forest Operations

This paper provides an overview of recent developments in remote and proximal sensing technologies and their basic applicability to various aspects of forest operations. It categorises these applications according to the technologies used and considers their deployment platform in terms of their being space-, airborne or terrestrial. For each combination of technology and application, a brief review of the state-of-the-art has been described from the literature, ranging from the measurement of forests and single trees, the derivation of landscape scale terrain models down to micro-topographic soil disturbance modelling, through infrastructure planning, construction and maintenance, to forest accessibility with ground and cable based harvesting systems. The review then goes on to discuss how these technologies and applications contribute to reducing impacts on forest soils, cultural heritage sites and other areas of special the use of computer vision on forest machines are discussed. The review concludes that despite the many promising or demonstrated applications of remotely or proximately sensed data in forest operations, almost all are still experimental and have a range of issues that need to be addressed or improved upon before widespread operationalization can take place. operations, nearby objects such as trees, stems, rocks, streams, and gullies also need to be measured from machine or human borne sensors, the so called proximal sensing (Mulla 2013). Proximal sensing is in the early stages of a potentially revolutionary change as cheap and robust sensors and technologies are increasingly applied in the collection, storage, and interpretation of data. Such data can be analysed and applied instantaneously or fed into Big Data systems that evaluate status and trends at local, regional or national levels (Lokers et al. 2016). For example, technologies inherent in smart phones and tablets today include distance ranging, orientation through inertial measurement units (IMUs) including magnetometers, gyroscopes and accelerometers, as well as Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS’s) and cameras (Tomaštík et al. 2016). In forestry, smartphone based sensors and apps have been demonstrated in a variety