Every year, HOLZKURIER, the forestry journal of the Austrian Agricultural Publishing House, selects a company that offers exceptional services and products for the forestry industry as the “Forestry Solutions Provider of the Year.” Following a special proposal from the Institute of Forest Growth and the Institute of Forest Engineering (BOKU, Vienna), the team from the Austrian “Holzkurier” presented the award for 2025 to RIEGL Laser Measurement Systems. The announcement and the article are available here:
https://www.holzkurier.com/rundholz/2024/12/der_digitale_baum.html
For your convenience and to provide you with more insights into RIEGL’s performance in forestry applications, we have provided the article and the information in English here. Enjoy reading!
Digitizing the Forest
Laser-based data collection is becoming increasingly important in forest monitoring and the digitalization of forest inventories. RIEGL has earned an excellent reputation in the forestry industry with its terrestrial, mobile, and airborne laser scanners and the associated 3D software solutions.
Expanding Laser Scanning Technology in Forestry
“The acceptance of laser scanning technology and its application in forests can certainly be further expanded. There is no question that laser scanning can be used in forestry,” states Bernhard Groiss, Senior Technical Expert for Lidar Forestry Applications at RIEGL. Lidar, an acronym for Light Detection and Ranging, is a method of measuring the distance between a sensor and a target object using pulsed lasers.
Laser Scanning Technology – in Use for Decades
Data generated with RIEGL laser scanners has been used in forestry for many years. With the help of ALS (Airborne Laser Scanning) and ULS (UAV-based Laser Scanning), areas, tree species composition, tree heights and volumes or terrain structures can be easily identified. “However, when it comes to DBH (Diameter at Breast Height) distributions or very specific information on individual trees, there is no getting around the use of terrestrial laser scanners,” explains Dr. Christoph Gollob from the Institute of Forest Growth at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) in Vienna. In practice, a combination of both technologies is often used. According to Groiss, the main customers for RIEGL laser scanners in the forestry sector are research facilities and educational institutes as well as surveying service providers.
Laser Devices instead of Mirror Relascope
With the RIEGL VZ-600i, RIEGL has launched a terrestrial laser scanner onto the market that is ideal for use in forestry. The scanner is fast, precise and efficient and delivers extremely accurate measurement data for a wide range of forestry-relevant parameters. Together with the Tyrolean software company Laserdata, RIEGL launched the RIEGL LIS TreeAnalyzer plugin in 2023. In combination with the company’s own RiSCAN PRO software, digital twins can be generated in 3D quality and data analyzed in detail.
Among other things, the RIEGL workflow records the DBH (Diameter at Breast Height), the tree height, the number of trees on a specific area, the crown area, the individual tree trunk and branch segmentation as well as the tree volume. Within 20 minutes, 0.5 ha can be completely surveyed.
“Our laser scanners practically replace the mirror relascope. The data is more accurate, reproducible and more comprehensive than with traditional sampling. At the same time, the laser scanners are less complicated to use than a few years ago and can be operated without special prior knowledge,” emphasizes Groiss. He adds: “Every single tree is recorded using GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) data. I can also recognize the undergrowth and the terrain from the large amount of data captured, as I can distinguish between ground and non-ground points.”
Current Inventory
For individual forestry operations, data collection using drones – in addition to regular forestry planning – opens up many new possibilities. For example, new forest roads can be planned, and existing paths and fords can be regularly checked for damage. Damage such as ground or slope slides can be detected quickly. Data acquisition using laser scanners is particularly effective in the case of storm or beetle damage. Damaged wood areas and volumes can be precisely recorded by drone flights shortly after the event – often even before the affected area can be entered for safety reasons and assessed using terrestrial methods.
“The 1.6 kg (3.5 lbs) RIEGL miniVUX-3UAV lidar sensor can also be used, for example, to determine nesting sites with pinpoint accuracy,” explains Groiss. Other possible applications for RIEGL laser scanners include the recording of dead wood and the monitoring of biotope and habitat trees.
Data Acquisition Beyond the Forest
Outside the forest, RIEGL laser scanners are also used to measure park and urban trees. Their volume and the amount of carbon from the trunk to the branches can hardly be described with shape numbers, but with laser technology they can. It is also possible, for example, to determine which tree or branch needs to be removed for traffic safety reasons. The Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB), a long-standing RIEGL customer, uses mobile laser scanners (MLS) mounted on trains. These detect during the journey whether trees or biomass are endangering the railroad line and appropriate measures need to be taken. “Our MLS devices provide centimeter-accurate data at a speed of 100 km/h. Of course, these devices can also be mounted on cars, boats or other vehicles,” explains Groiss.
RIEGL has been one of the world’s leading manufacturers of laser scanners for over 40 years. The globally active company attaches great importance to the quality of its devices and a high level of vertical integration. “Our laser scanners are packed with innovation, sophisticated technology and high performance. We even manufacture our circuit boards ourselves. Comprehensive software packages deliver highly accurate and meaningful point clouds,” explains Groiss. The company has its own research and development department as well as a software department that continuously develops the devices.
The Gold Standard
“We are very satisfied with the RIEGL scanners. The support in particular – also for scientific questions and method development – is outstanding, uncomplicated and unique,” emphasizes Gollob. The BOKU Institute has owned a RIEGL VZ-600i since the beginning of 2024 and has previously used ALS data generated with RIEGL laser scanners and laser scanning systems. “For me, RIEGL is a technology leader because the products are continuously developed in close cooperation with research and practice, and the outstanding quality of RIEGL scanners enables even demanding forestry applications,” adds his BOKU colleague Prof. Dr. Karl Stampfer from the Institute of Forest Engineering. “RIEGL is the gold standard, the RIEGL VZ-600i will dominate the market for the next few years,” emphasizes Günther Bronner, Managing Director of the forestry services company Umweltdata, Tullnerbach, Lower Austria.
Source: Press Release
