Post provided by Jeff W. Atkins (he/him)

Ecological researchers have adopted light detection and ranging (LiDAR) as a means of quantifying ecosystem structure over the past 25+ years. This is especially true in forest-related research, as LiDAR provides the ability to estimate ecosystem structure with incredibly fine detail, over broad areas. LiDAR can work at the scale of individual trees—for example crown delineation algorithms that identify singular tree canopies—or the stand-level with aggregate structural metrics. In this blog post, Jeff shares insight from he and his co-author’s recent publication “Scale dependency of LiDAR-derived forest structural diversity,” which proposes that using LiDAR requires statistical reassessment to ensure we are measuring what we think we are.