Modern airborne laser scanners can make up to 80 000 precise measurements per second for 3D
positions on the ground and in vegetation canopies. Furthermore, laser scanning technology is stiil
rapidly improving. Given the latest research, laser scanning obviously has great potential as a tool
for estimating forest resources and describing forest environments.
The title of the workshop - Scandlaser - is short for "Scandinavian workshop on Laser scanning of
forest resources". It started with a small informal workshop in Umea, May 2002, with participants
from Finland, Norway, Sweden and Canada. It was then apparent that the Scandinavian countries
had complementary experiences in this research field. In Finland several projects related to analy
sis of single trees detected in laser scanner data are ongoing. Much of this work started in the EU
project HighScan, coordinated by Helsinki University of Technology. Norway, on the other hand,
laser scanning of forest resources on stand level has been taken to a stage where it is nearly op
erationaL In Sweden cooperation between the Swedish Defense Research Agency (FOA) and SLU
for laser scanning of forest resources began in1 99 1 and has continued to this day. Further details
about the laser scanning experiences in Finland, Norway and Sweden are given in the "country
reports" in this volume.
At the meeting in May 20 02, it was obvious there was a need for a more widely announced scien
tific meeting. We received funding from SNS (the Nordic Forest Research Co-operation committee,
http://www. nordiskskogforskning.org), which is the main economic sponsor of Scandlaser. The
meeting could serve a dual purpose: i) to inform and discuss what could currently be done practi
cally in laser scanning of forest resources; and ii) to discuss current scientific issues in this rapidly
developing field. Therefore, we decided to organize both a "Practical workshop" to be held Sep
tember 2, 2003, and a "Scientific workshop", to be held September 3-4, 2003. With one exception,
this proceedings volume includes only the contributions to the Scientific workshop.
EARSeL (the European Association of Remote Sensing Laboratories, http:l/www.earsel.org)
helped in organizing the scientific workshop, which is also the first activity of the new EARSeL
Special Interest Group (SIG) on forestry. Further information about this special interest group can
be obtained from Hakan Olsson (Hakan.Olsson@resgeom.slu.se). Furthermore, the workshop is
also announced as an activity within IUFRO division 4 (http://www.iufro.org/).
To our knowledge, the Scandlaser scientific workshop in Umea is the first meeting of its kind in
Europe. In 2002, there were two similar meetings organized: The Australian Workshop on Airborne
Laser Altimetry for Forest and Woodland Inventory and Monitoring, and the International Workshop
on Three-dimensional Analysis of Forest Structure and Terrain using LiDAR Technology. The main
results from these workshops are being published in a special issue of the Canadian Journal of
Remote Sensing, appearing Autumn 2003. We are happy to provide continuity from these work
shops by having one of the editors of the special issue, Dr. Mike Wulder, as one of the key note
speakers. Dr. Wulder and Dr. Paul Treitz, who is a member of the Scandlaser scientific commit
tee, were also organizers of the Canadian workshop. Another key note speaker is Dr. Randolph
Wynne from Virginia Polytechnic who gives an overview of forestry laser scanning in the USA. He
is also the guest editor of a recent (June 2 003) Forest Science special issue on forestry remote
sensing. We are also pleased to have Dr. Ove Steinvall, head of the department of laser systems
at the Swedish Defense Research Institute, as a key note speaker. Dr. Steinvall was a pioneer in
laser scanning and he is uniquely positioned to provide the forestry community with insights about
what future technology to expect. This proceedings volume is printed in time to be distributed at the workshop, and only the abstracts
are peer reviewed. The reason for this is that we think this quickly developing field merits fast
communication. A digital version of the proceedings, with illustrations in color, as well as the power
point presentations from the practical workshop, will be made available at the EARSeL SIG For
estry home page: http://www-earsel-sig-forestry.slu.se/scandlaser. Furthermore, a few selected
articles from the scientific workshop are likely to be published in the Scandinavian Journal of For
est Research, after peer review.
TheScandlaser workshops have been organized jointly between the Swedish University of Agricul
tural Sciences (SLU) , the Agricultural University of Norway (NLH) and the Finnish Geodetic Insti
tute (FG!), with Hakan Olsson at SLU as chairman of the local organizing committee; Erik Nresset
at NLH, as responsible for the Practical workshop, and Juha Hyyppa at FGi, as chairman the
scientific committee. Members in the local organizing committee have been Tina Granqvist Pahlen
and Heather Reese, and members in the scientific committee have been Paul Treitz, Queens Uni
versity; Mats Nilsson, SLU; Hakan Olsson, SLU; and Erik Nresset, NLH.
It is our hope that Scandlaser will help create a forestry laser scanner community in Europe, with
links worldwide. Looking forward, one timely follow-on to Scandlaser will be the International Con
ference "Laser-Scanners for Forest and Landscape Assessment- Instruments, Processing, Meth
ods and Applications", which will be held in Freiburg, Germany, 3 - 6 October 2004.
(http://www.natscan.de).