ScanForest4Carbon

Forest ecosystems form the largest biotic carbon store on earth. In the future, C must be sequestered from the atmosphere quickly and efficiently, so additional C absorption in forest biomass should be sought. The basis for serious C trading at the forest operation level must be objectively traceable C monitoring. In this respect, particularly high demands must be placed on the inventory methods suitable for this purpose in terms of accuracy and repeatability. Especially in hardwoods, the traditional manual measurement methods are not sufficient because they are only focused on economically exploitable wood and do not represent e.g., carbon storage in deadwood. Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) still has weaknesses in this regard and is not certified by a recognized institution. However, such certification would be required to allow forestry operations and protected areas to participate in voluntary accounting of C0² storage. ScanForest4Carbon aims at improving the TLS-based forest inventory methods developed so far in terms of effectiveness, accuracy, repeatability and certifiability.