Strengths and Limitations of Handheld Mobile Laser Scanning in Vegetation Assessment in Tropical Mangroves, Wetlands, and Rangelands Ecosystems, Queensland Australia

Abstract

Handheld Mobile Laser Scanning (HMLS) is increasingly used for high resolution 3D mapping in construction, mining and natural environments. This study evaluates the strengths and limitations of HMLS for vegetation assessment in diverse tropical eco-systems across north Queensland, Australia, including rangelands, grasslands, man-groves and estuarine wetland forests. We assessed the accuracy of HMLS-derived point clouds against ground-truth measurements and compared performance with UAV SfM–MVS surveying. HMLS achieved centimeter-level accuracy for vegetation metrics, with mean absolute errors of 8.5 cm for Diameter at Breast Height (DBH) in rangeland forests and 6.7 cm for tussock height. The system consistently produced high-density point clouds, enabling detailed characterization of vertical structure, particularly understory vegetation often obscured in aerial surveys. HMLS proved operationally flexible across closed-canopy wetlands, mangroves, rangeland forests and open grasslands. Key limi-tations included restricted horizontal point cloud penetration in dense vegetation, compounded by access constraints and environmental conditions, and point cloud drift in areas with few geometric features, such as grasslands, which introduced uncertainty in vegetation metrics. High computational demands further constrained workflow effi-ciency. Overall, HMLS demonstrates strong potential as an accurate and versatile tool for vegetation mapping and structural analysis in complex tropical ecosystems.

Plant phenotyping relevance

HMLSを用いた植物の3D形態・構造計測手法を開発的に評価し、地上真値およびUAV手法と比較検証しているため、植物フェノタイピング手法が中心である。

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