Lidar remote sensing for forestry applications: The Indian context

Lidar remote sensing has the unique advantage of providing three-dimensional data through direct and indirect retrievals with unprecedented accuracy. It has enormous potential for forest ecological research, because it directly measures the physical attributes of vegetation canopy structure that are highly correlated with the basic plant community measurements. This technology is new and is restricted to only few countries of the world and has not yet properly reached to many countries including India. In India, this technique could be utilized to address various aspects of forest ecosystem management, not possible earlier with the data available from aerial photographs, optical and radar satellites or even by ground measurements. This article advocates that forest management strategy in India should be based on reliable, lidar-derived database on forest structure and its productive potentials.