FOREST RESOURCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM BY STANDING TREE VOLUME ESTIMATION USING AERIAL STEREO PHOTOS

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 biomass resources in terms of alternative energy. This paper describes a novel system for forest resource management based on threedimensional 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.