Applications of TLS and ALS in Evaluating Forest Ecosystem Services: A Southern Carpathians Case Study

Abstract

Forests play an important role in biodiversity conservation, being one of the main providers of ecosystem services, according to the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity. The functions and ecosystem services provided by forests are various concerning the natural capital and the socio-economic systems. Past decades of remote-sensing advances make it possible to address a large set of variables, including both biophysical parameters and ecological indicators, that characterize forest ecosystems and their capacity to supply services. This research aims to identify and implement existing methods that can be used for evaluating ecosystem services by employing airborne and terrestrial stationary laser scanning on plots from the Southern Carpathian mountains. Moreover, this paper discusses the adaptation of field-based approaches for evaluating ecological indicators to automated processing techniques based on airborne and terrestrial stationary laser scanning (ALS and TLS). Forest ecosystem functions, such as provisioning, regulation, and support, and the overall forest condition were assessed through the measurement and analysis of stand-based biomass characteristics (e.g., trees’ heights, wood volume), horizontal structure indices (e.g., canopy cover), and recruitment-mortality processes as well as overall health status assessment (e.g., dead trees identification, deadwood volume). The paper, through the implementation of the above-mentioned analyses, facilitates the development of a complex multi-source monitoring approach as a potential solution for assessing ecosystem services provided by the forest, as well as a basis for further monetization approaches.

A Review of Eco-Product Value Realization and Eco-Industry with Enlightenment toward the Forest Ecosystem Services in Karst Ecological Restoration

“…However, in natural public resources with characteristics of dispersion, mobility, and cross-region, such as rivers, forests, climate, and other ecosystems, there are problems such as the unclear property rights ownership of eco-products. Therefore, establishing a multisource monitoring mechanism for eco-products and a unified system of natural resource classification standards is necessary [115]. By fully utilizing the latest digital technologies such as big data, we organize and carry out a nationwide "pre-investigation" of natural resource assets.…”

Integrating monetary and non-monetary valuation for ecosystem services in Piatra Craiului national park, Southern Carpathians: a comprehensive approach to sustainability and conservation

“…For the area where the research was carried out, respectively, Romania, several studies have been conducted to assess forest ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration (Chivulescu and Schiteanu, 2017;Dobre et al, 2021;Nichiforel et al, 2021;Pache et al, 2021;Pitar et al, 2021;Chivulescu et al, 2022) water purification (Petz et al, 2012;Platon et al, 2015), and recreational value (Hartel et al, 2014;Bogdan et al, 2019;Tudoran et al, 2022). However, as environmental conditions evolve and human pressures on forests intensify, further research is necessary to comprehensively understand the changing dynamics of these services and devise effective conservation measures (Chivulescu et al, 2020;Leca et al, 2023).…”

Structure and diversity in a periurban forest of Bucharest, Romania

“…To that end, indicators were developed to assess the ecosystem functions and to determine how their provision varied (Dobbs et al 2011). As anticipated, most frequently addressed were services within the provisioning function, through the mean of the key biometric characteristic (diameter; height) (Dobre et al 2021). The forest structure among biodiversity served as support for determining productivity (Bohn & Huth 2017, Fischer et al 2019) and assessing regulating services (Escobedo et al 2015, Hui et al 2019.…”