Terrestrial Laser Scanning to Predict Canopy Area Metrics, Water Storage Capacity, and Throughfall Redistribution in Small Trees

Abstract

Urban trees deliver many ecological services to the urban environment, including reduced runoff generation in storms. Trees intercept rainfall and store part of the water on leaves and branches, reducing the volume and velocity of water that reaches the soil. Moreover, trees modify the spatial distribution of rainwater under the canopy. However, measuring interception parameters is a complex task because it depends on many factors, including environmental conditions (rainfall intensity, wind speed, etc.) and tree characteristics (plant surface area, leaf and branch inclination angle, etc.). In the few last decades, remotely sensed data have been tested for retrieving tree metrics, but the use of this derived data for predicting interception parameters are still being developed. In this study, we measured the minimum water storage capacity (Cmin) and throughfall under the canopies of 12 trees belonging to three different species. All trees had their plant surface metrics calculated: plant surface area (PSA), plant area index (PAI), and plant area density (PAD). Trees were scanned with a mobile terrestrial laser scan (TLS) to obtain their individual canopy point clouds. Point clouds were used to calculate canopy metrics (canopy projected area and volume) and TLS-derived surface metrics. Measured surface metrics were then correlated to derived TLS metrics, and the relationship between TLS data and interception parameters was tested. Additionally, TLS data was used in analyses of throughfall distribution on a sub-canopy scale. The significant correlation between the directly measured surface area and TLS-derived metrics validates the use of the remotely sensed data for predicting plant area metrics. Moreover, TLS-derived metrics showed a significant correlation with a water storage capacity parameter (Cmin). The present study supports the use of TLS data as a tool for measuring tree metrics and ecosystem services such as Cmin; however, more studies to understand how to apply remotely sensed data into ecological analyses in the urban environment must be encouraged.

Urban ecosystem services and climate change: a dynamic interplay

“…Climate-induced shifts in rainfall patterns challenge urban trees' ability to intercept and store intense rainfall events, leading to increased runoff and reduced water infiltration (Riedel and Weber, 2020;Hendricks and Dowtin, 2023). Drought stress associated with climate change decreases canopy cover and evapotranspiration, limiting the capacity of urban trees to intercept and store rainfall (Baptista et al, 2018;Carlyle-Moses et al, 2020). Extreme rainfall overwhelms canopy interception capacity, saturates soil, and leads to increased runoff (Qin, 2020).…”

Role of Vegetation as a Mitigating Factor in the Urban Context

“…According to Baptista et al [140,141], accurate quantification of rainfall interception is a complex task because it depends on many factors, including environmental conditions (rainfall intensity, wind speed, etc.). It is consolidated, however, that trees intercept rainfall and store part of the water on leaves and branches, reducing the volume and velocity of water that reaches the soil.…”

Simulating the distribution of rainfall interception ratio in a Masson's pine plot using terrestrial laser scanning data

“…Detailed three‐dimensional structure features of leaves and branches can be extracted from point clouds collected from forest canopies by the terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) technology (Baptista et al, 2018; Holder et al, 2020). TLS point clouds have been used to simulate the V IN of individual tree crowns and the plot‐level canopy (Baptista et al, 2018; Yu et al, 2020). Combining TLS data to simulate the RIR of canopy organs has the following advantages: (1) TLS data collection is robust against complex understory light conditions.…”