International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XXXIX-B8, 2012 
XXII ISPRS Congress, 25 August — 01 September 2012, Melbourne, Australia 
     
FOREST RESOURCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM 
BY STANDING TREE VOLUME ESTIMATION USING AERIAL STEREO PHOTOS 
T. Kamiya*, H. Koizumi*, J. Wang*, A. Itaya® 
* System Technologies Laboratories, NEC System Technologies, Ltd., 8916-47, Takayama, Ikoma, Nara 630-0101, 
Japan - (kamiya-hxa, koizumi-hxa, wang-jxb)@necst.nec.co.jp 
b Faculty of Bioresources, Mie University, 1577, Kurimamachiya, Tsu, Mie 5 14-8507, Japan - itaya@bio.mie-u.ac.jp 
Commission VIII, WG VIII/7 
KEY WORDS: Forestry, GIS, DSM/DTM, Aerial Photo, Stereo 
ABSTRACT: 
Forest resource management usually requires much human labour for the field survey to keep the data up-to-date especially for the 
mountainous area. Furthermore, forest resources start to draw more and more attention not only as lumber resources but also as bio- 
mass resources in terms of alternative energy. This paper describes a novel system for forest resource management based on three- 
dimensional data acquired from stereo matching of aerial photographs. The proposed system consists of image analysis of aerial 
photograph for forest resource estimation, and a GIS system aiming at better management of the forest resources. We have built a 
prototype GIS system and applied it to the experiment forest in Mie prefecture, Japan. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
Forest resource management usually requires much human 
labour. In Japan, local governments maintain the forest base 
map based on the reports of private sectors or their own field 
survey. It costs much to keep the data up-to-date especially for 
mountainous area. Furthermore, forest resources start to draw 
more and more attention not only as lumber resources but also 
as bio-mass resources in terms of alternative energy. 
Remote sensing technologies, such as aerial and satellite 
photographs, are effective for forest resource management 
because photographs can grasp the current status of forest in a 
wide area immediately, especially meaningful for the places 
where it is difficult to step in. But photographs can only show 
two-dimensional information such as tree position. In 
consideration of bio-mass resources, information related to 
forest volume such as tree height is also necessary. 
This paper describes a novel system for forest resource 
management based on three-dimensional data acquired from 
stereo matching of aerial photographs. The system aims to 
reduce human labour for the field survey by resource estimation 
from aerial photographs. 
2. BACKGROUND 
Up to now, there have been many researches related to forest 
information estimation by image analysis in forestry field, such 
as satellite image analysis for land cover classification 
(Colstoun, 2003), or analysis of thinning effect on a forest 
based on forest canopy density information (Itaya, 2007). But 
most of the researches only implement 2D image analysis, so it 
is hard to widely estimate the tree volume by them. Some other 
researches estimate the tree volume from the crown area 
estimated by 2D image analysis (Hirata, 2008). But these 
researches use relational expression between the crown area and 
the tree height obtained from the field survey to estimate the 
tree volume. In the practical case, only one relational 
expression can hardly reflect the condition of the whole vast 
forest. Thus, utilization of 3D data is essential to estimate the 
tree volume. 
There are also some researchers using LIDAR to acquire tree 
height for estimating forest information. The research of Means 
et al. shows the possibility of estimating the tree volume from 
the tree height and the tree crown by LIDAR (Means, 2000). 
Though LIDAR can acquire the tree height in high accuracy, it 
is hard to estimate the tree species and tree density in LIDAR 
data. In this sense, it is hard to expect accurate estimation of 
forest resource by LIDAR. Furthermore, LIDAR has a problem 
of high cost. 
3. FOREST RESOURCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM 
This paper proposes the forest resource management system 
using 3D data. Figure 1 shows the conceptual diagram of the 
system. 
       
  
    
  
Aerial Forest Resource 
Photograph Forest Resource 
Management System 
Figure 1. Conceptual Diagram of Forest Resource Management 
System 
Forest 3D Model 
The proposed system consists of two stages. The first stage is 
image analysis of aerial photograph for forest resource 
estimation and the second stage is a GIS system aiming at better 
management of the forest resources including the function of 
road planning.