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Scientia Silvae Sinicae ›› 2026, Vol. 62 ›› Issue (4): 106-117.doi: 10.11707/j.1001-7488.LYKX20250136

• Research papers • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Point Cloud Semantic-Guided Individual Tree Segmentation and Parameter Estimation Using UAV Laser Scanning

Yining Lian1,2,Hao Lu1,2,*(),Yongjian Huai1,2,*(),Haifeng Xu3,Langning Huo4,Zhichao Wang5   

  1. 1. School of Information Science and Technology, Beijing Forestry University Beijing 100083
    2. Hebei Key Laboratory of Smart National Park Beijing 100083
    3. College of Big Data and Intelligent Engineering, Southwest Forestry University Kunming 650233
    4. Department of Forest Resource Management, Swedish University of Agriculture Sciences Ume? Sweden SE-90183
    5. Beijing Key Laboratory of Precision Forestry, Beijing Forestry University Beijing 100083
  • Received:2025-03-11 Online:2026-04-15 Published:2026-04-11
  • Contact: Hao Lu,Yongjian Huai E-mail:luhao@bjfu.edu.cn;huaiyj@bjfu.edu.cn

Abstract:

Objective: To address crown overlap, sparse stem points, and noise interference in unmanned aerial vehicle laser scanning (ULS) point clouds for individual tree segmentation (ITS) and parameter estimation in eucalyptus plantations, a semantic-guided method for individual tree segmentation and parameter extraction was developed to improve segmentation accuracy and parameter estimation performance. Method: Gaofeng Forest Farm in Nanning, Guangxi was selected as the study area, and a complete point-cloud processing workflow was established. A deep learning model was used to perform semantic segmentation on point clouds, the point clouds were classified into semantic categories, including stems, leaves, and ground. Subsequently, a hybrid algorithm combining density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN) and K-nearest neighbors (KNN) was used for individual tree segmentation by incorporating semantic information. To counter the sparsity of ULS point clouds at the stem level, stem curve fitting was adopted for diameter at breast height (DBH) estimation, and a height pseudo-waveform method was employed for tree height estimation. The proposed method was validated across plots with varying structural complexities to assess its applicability and accuracy. Result: Experimental results showed that high ITS accuracy was achieved in the eucalyptus plantations, with an overall recall of 0.92, precision of 0.95, and an average F-score of 0.93. For individual tree parameter estimation, tree height estimation showed a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.98 with a root mean square error (RMSE) of 1.03 m. DBH estimation yielded an R2 of 0.81 and an RMSE of 2.96 cm. Conclusion: The proposed method enables accurate individual tree segmentation and parameter extraction from ULS point clouds in eucalyptus plantations, indicating that semantic guidance can improve the applicability of ULS point clouds for individual-tree-level analysis. This study provides a reference for the efficient use of ULS data in forest resource monitoring.

Key words: individual tree segmentation, individual tree parameters, light detectionand ranging (LiDAR), unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), point cloud

CLC Number: