Research Article | OPEN ACCESS
A New Method for Forest Volume Measurement with an Electronic Angle Gauge
1Bin Dong, 1, 2Liping Liu, 1Li Sun, 1Changqin Zhang, 1Yuan Hong and 1Guoying Qian
1College of Science, Anhui Agricultural University, 130 Changjiang Road, Hefei,
Anhui Province, 230036, China
2Faculty of Science and Environmental Studies, Lake Head University, 955 Oliver Road, Thunder Bay, ON, P7B 5E1, Canada
Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology 2013 11:3191-3197
Received: October 12, 2012 | Accepted: December 03, 2012 | Published: April 05, 2013
Abstract
To realise precise, real-time measurement of forest volume, this study discusses the principles and method of forest volume measurement when utilizing an electronic gauge. Use of the electronic gauge, to count trees within five concentric circles, resulted in a decrease in the variation of estimated forest volume, as the number of circles increased. This estimate became reliable upon reaching the fourth concentric circle. In contrast, the use of a conventional angle gauge revealed no obvious regularity and no significant trend using multiple observation points. As well, for forest inventory plots with uneven spatial distribution, there was relatively low precision when using multiple observation points with a conventional angle gauge: the relative errors of forest volume measurement reached almost 40% in the first plot using multiple observation points. The electronic angle gauge is comprised of a telescope and Charge Coupled Device (CCD) system, which reduced the probability of a misreading and achieved accurate real-time measurement of forest volume. Observers can choose an arbitrary location to position the electronic angle gauge. The survey time with the new method was half that of using a conventional angle gauge at five different observation locations. The forest volume measurement was automated using a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) with newly-designed software capable of identifying, registering and then counting the trees in a plot. This method improves accuracy of forest volume measurement and reduces the time and effort required previously.
Keywords:
Conventional angle gauge, concentric circles technology, electronic angle gauge, forest volume measurement, Personal Digital Assistant (PDA),
Competing interests
The authors have no competing interests.
Open Access Policy
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Copyright
The authors have no competing interests.
|
|
![](http://www.maxwellsci.com/images/RJASET-maxw.jpg) |
ISSN (Online): 2040-7467
ISSN (Print): 2040-7459 |
![Submit Manuscript](../images/sub.jpg) |
Information |
|
|
|
Sales & Services |
|
|
|