ABSTRACT
Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) has been used widely in topographic deformation monitoring, and the issue of deformation information extraction from multi-temporal point cloud data has high importance. Here, a method is developed for the extraction of topographic deformation in a forested area based on the 3D spatial information of individual trees. Initially, ground points are removed by using a local topographic surface fitting method, then individual trees are segmented using the PTrees algorithm; finally, the motion of individual trees is computed with a combination of global and local rigid-body transformations. Experimental validation results show that the proposed method is reliable to within a 0.12° maximum tilt error and 8.7 mm maximum displacement error. In addition, some inferences were drawn based on the original topography and the topographic deformation monitoring results. For example, a mining work-face was located beyond the eastern part of the study area, and trees growing in the middle part of this region of interest may face a survival challenge.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.