News

We proudly present our new software for detecting trees in high resolution surface data, called FINT (Find INdividual Trees). The software is freely downloadable for all members from the tools section of our website. The tool FINT extracts positions of dominant and co-dominant trees from high resolution surface models (e.g., from LiDAR data) of forests. Since most users have access to raster data used in standard Geographical Information Systems (GIS) instead of 3D point data, FINT is based on the identification of local maxima in raster data. The principal aim of FINT is to obtain a realistic forest structure in the sense that the positions of the largest trees and the locations of the main gaps and couloirs in the forests are recorded and subsequently integrated in natural hazard process simulation models. FINT can be too imprecise for silvicultural analyses (e.g, estimation of stand density, basal area and standing volume), especially for broadleaved and mixed forests. An important variable determining the precision of the outcomes is the resolution of the input data. Therefore, a minimal resolution of 1 x 1 m is recommended. More information can be found here.