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How did we get here? An early history of forestry lidar 1

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 Can. J. Remote Sensing, Vol. 39, No. S1, pp. S6S17, 2013

How did we get here? An early history

of forestry lidar1
Ross Nelson

Abstract. Functioning lasers were first demonstrated in 1960 in the United States and in 1961 in Canada and in the Soviet
Union, but research into the use of lasers as forest measurement tools did not begin for another 15 years. Initially, with
respect to Earth resources, lasers were employed to measure sea ice surface roughness, to make near-shore bathymetric
Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing Downloaded from pubs.casi.ca by ESA-ESTEC on 05/20/14

measurements, to penetrate forests to make detailed topographic measurements, and to fluoresce oceanic phytoplankton
for surface current studies. Some of these early studies noted that forest profiles were evident but in fact added noise to
topographic retrievals. As early as 1964, researchers noted vegetation returns acquired using an airborne heliumneon
(HeNe), 0.63 mm, continuous wave (CW) laser. A decade and many airborne studies later, scientists with TRANARG, a
mapping and surveying company in Caracas, Venezuela, reported on flights undertaken in 1976 that utilized a HeNe
lidar to collect over 11 000 km of lidar profiles, spaced 1.5 km apart, to construct a topographic map to help site a new
reservoir. Though they depended on the laser to penetrate vegetation, they noted 3540 m median canopy heights with
emergents up to 55 m in their profiles. Trees came to be regarded as a signal rather than noise in the mid-1970s. In 1976 in
the Soviet Union, Russian researchers felled a birch and a spruce, aimed a HeNe CW laser with a spot size of
approximately 25 mm at the horizontal trees, produced a profilograph, compared it with tape measurements, and
concluded that, with increased power, such a laser could be mounted on an aircraft to remotely measure forest canopies.
In 1979, they mounted their HeNe laser on an AN-2 biplane and acquired their first airborne profiles. These studies and
others done prior to 1985, i.e., the first two decades of airborne laser research, are reviewed in this glance backwards at the
history of forestry lidar.
For personal use only.

Résumé. Les premiers lasers ont vu le jour en 1960 aux États-Unis et en 1961 au Canada et en l’Union Soviétique, mais les
recherches portant sur l’utilisation des lasers comme instruments pour faire des mesures forestières n’ont débuté que
15 ans plus tard. En ce qui concerne l’étude des ressources terrestres, les lasers ont d’abord été utilisés pour mesurer la
rugosité de la surface des glaces marines, faire des mesures bathymétriques à proximité des côtes, pénétrer au travers de la
végétation afin d’obtenir des mesures topographiques détaillées sous couvert forestier, et aussi pour étudier les courants de
surface en mesurant la fluorescence du phytoplancton océanique. Si certaines de ces études font déjà mention de profils de
végétation forestière bien apparents, ces profils sont considérés comme source de bruit additionnel lors de l’extraction
d’informations topographiques. Dès 1964, des chercheurs ont ainsi observé des retours liés à la végétation dans des
données acquises en utilisant un laser à héliumnéon (HeNe) aéroporté, laser à onde continue (CW « continuous wave »)
et émettant à 0.63 mm. Une décennie et de nombreuses études basées sur des mesures aéroportées plus tard, des
scientifiques, en collaboration avec TRANARG, une société de Caracas, au Venezuela, spécialisée dans la cartographie et
les levés topographiques, ont rendu compte de survols réalisés en 1976 en utilisant un lidar à HeNe pour collecter plus de
11 000 km de profils lidar espacés de 1.5 km afin de produire une carte topographique dans le cadre d’un projet
d’implantation d’un nouveau réservoir d’eau. Bien qu’attendant avant tout du laser qu’il pénètre au travers de la
végétation pour pouvoir décrire le terrain, ils ont relevé sur leurs profils des hauteurs médianes de canopée de 3540 m,
avec des émergents atteignant 55 m.Le signal lié aux arbres a commencé à être considéré comme une information et non
plus comme du bruit au milieu des années 1970. En 1976, en l’Union Soviétique, des chercheurs russes ont abattu un
bouleau et un épicéa, ont pointé en direction des arbres couchés un laser HeNe continu avec une taille d’empreinte de 
25 mm, l’ont utilisé comme un profilographe et ont ensuite comparé les résultats avec des mesures prises avec un mètre. Ils
conclurent que, en augmentant sa puissance, un tel laser pourrait être embarqué dans un avion pour mesurer la canopée
forestière. En 1979, ils embarquèrent leur laser HeNe sur un biplan AN-2 et firent l’acquisition de leurs premiers profils
aéroportés. Ces études, ainsi que d’autres études réalisées avant 1985, et donc au cours des deux premières décennies de
recherches sur les lasers aéroportés, sont passées en revue dans cette rétrospective de l’histoire du lidar en foresterie.

Received 24 October 2012. Accepted 11 March 2013. Published on the Web at http://pubs.casi.ca/journal/cjrs on 7 June 2013.
Ross Nelson.2 NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center, 618/Biospheric Sciences Branch, Bldg. 33, Room G405 Greenbelt Maryland 29771,
United States.
1
 
Presentation at Silvilaser/Vancouver First Return, 16 19, September 2012.
2
Corresponding author (e-mail: Ross.F.Nelson@nasa.gov).

S6 # 2013 CASI
 Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing / Journal canadien de télédétection
Introduction
The science associated with the use of airborne and space
lasers to measure vegetation is well established, but the
origins and underpinnings of forestry lidar science now
reach back almost 50 years. Many of the documents that
describe these initial airborne lidar studies and experiments
sit in old symposium proceedings on library shelves, in
company archives, or in government technical memoranda.
Language also impedes access, and translations of early
Russian journal articles, for instance, can be expensive, time
Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing Downloaded from pubs.casi.ca by ESA-ESTEC on 05/20/14
consuming, and difficult to understand if the translator is
not well versed in the arcana of lidar remote sensing3.
These types of documents are reviewed to try to
determine, for instance, who first looked at a vegetation
profile generated by a laser? Who first related laser ranges to
forest structure? What challenges did the early researchers
face? What were the primary applications of the first
airborne lidar systems? What kinds of lasers were used to
acquire the measurements? The steps, the gains in knowl-
edge, that have carried us to where we are today have been
incremental and have accumulated over five decades. This
paper looks at the first two decades of the documentation of
the discovery and development of lasers, their integration
For personal use only.
onto aircraft, and research undertaken by these laser and
lidar pioneers. The results of their early efforts lead directly
to our present capabilities, capabilities that currently permit
us to measure directly or to estimate the biophysical
characteristics of forests in great detail.
The context of this early work is important because the
politics of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s set the tenor for much
of the research done in the United States (US). The
microwave equivalent of the laser, the maser (microwave
amplification by stimulated emission of radiation), was
developed and made operational in the 1950s. Attempts to
build the first operational laser (light amplification) were
made in the late 1950s, with success realized in 1960. Much
of the research was conducted in the US, in Canada, and in
Russia, which at the time was part of the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics (USSR). The Iron Curtain separating
the Communist east from west and the language barrier
dictated that much of the formative work to make the
world’s first laser proceeded independently. Though politi-
cally the US and the USSR were bitter enemies, there was
cross-talk, cooperation, and visits between Russian and US
scientists who were trying to develop the hardware to
amplify microwaves and light waves to produce coherent,
spectrally pure, powerful beams of electromagnetic radiation
(C.H. Townes, personal communication, 2012). In addition,
3
Many, though not all, of the more obscure reports, technical
memoranda, and articles published in Russian journals cited herein
can be downloaded from the following publically accessible
address: ftp://fusionftp.gsfc.nasa.gov/Silvilaser12/. The Russian
journals are in Russian. If someone translates one of these articles
and is willing to share that translation, please send it to the author
for inclusion on this site.
# 2013 CASI
things that we take for granted today did not exist then.
Early computers were as large as rooms; today’s scientific
calculators have more RAM than the computer aboard
Apollo 11, the first manned mission to the Moon. Digital
recording devices (e.g., magnetic tapes invented 1951 and
hard drives first used commercially in 1956), were large,
limited, and cumbersome. The first Global Positioning
System (GPS) satellite was launched in 1978, the full
complement of 24 orbiting GPS satellites was completed
in 1993, and the US Department of Defense did not stop
intentionally degrading the accuracy of the civilian GPS
signals until 2000. The Russian equivalent, GLONASS
(Globalnaya Navigatsionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema or
Global Navigation Satellite System), became available to
the civilian sector in 2007. Functional lasers, transportable
computers to record laser data, and geolocation information
were not as readily accessible nor as easy to use in the ‘‘early
days’’ of forestry lidar.
Development of the laser
Numerous researchers working independently in the
USSR, Canada, and the US developed the idea of ‘‘stimu-
lated emissions of radiation’’ (the ‘‘ser’’ in laser), working
first with microwave amplification (masers, early 1950s)
and then with light amplification. In 1955, Aleksandr
Prokhorov and Nicholay Basov, working with microwaves
in the USSR, determined that optical pumping could be
used to maintain continuous, stimulated emissions. In the
US the patent for the laser, at that time called an ‘‘optical
maser’’, was filed in 1958 by Charles Townes and Arthur
Schawlow of Bell Labs, was awarded in 1960, and was
contested in court until 1987. The person contesting the Bell
Labs patent, Gordon Gould, a PhD candidate at Columbia
University in 1958, coined the term ‘‘laser’’ in a paper
presented a year later (Gould, 1959). Though subject to
some debate and litigation, the contest to build the first
operational laser was won by the Hughes Research Lab in
Malibu, California, on 16 May 1960. Theodore Maiman
assembled and operated a pulsed, synthetic ruby 0.694 mm
(red) laser (Maiman, 1960), besting others at Bell Labs,
Columbia University, and at the Technical Research Group,
a US defense contractor. The first laser, an instrument that
can easily be held in the palm of an adult hand, was capable
of firing only a single pulse. The inventor of that first laser
described it as being a one ‘‘Gillette’’ instrument because it
could only burn through one Gillette razor blade. The
world’s first laser still works, as demonstrated on its 50th
birthday in 2010 at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver,
British Columbia, (http://spie.org/x40717.xml [accessed 8
February 2013]).
Canada fired its first laser on 12 January 1961 at the
National Research Council’s (NRC) Sussex Drive spectro-
scopy lab in Ottawa, Ontario. Boris Stoicheff and Alex
Szabo built the laser but were having problems with the
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 Vol. 39, No. S1, Suppl. 1 2013
purity of the ruby crystals; their instrument would not fire.
Arthur Schawlow, working at Bell Labs in Murray Hill,
New Jersey, visited the pair at the NRC. When told of
the problem, he pulled a ruby rod out of his pocket and
offered it to the Canadian team. The substitution worked
(Szabo, 2010).
Behind the Iron Curtain, independent developments in
laser design were in progress, well documented in a
collection of papers, freely downloadable with English
translations, made available by the Russian Academy of
Science in 2010 (http://www.opticsinfobase.org /laserfest/
Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing Downloaded from pubs.casi.ca by ESA-ESTEC on 05/20/14
laserfest-soviet.cfm [accessed 8 February 2013]). The first
Russian laser, also made of ruby, was operated successfully
in June of 1961 at the Vavilov State Optical Institute in
Leningrad (Belousova, 2011), now called St. Petersburg.
In the west, public reaction to the invention of the laser
was somewhat varied. While today lasers are ubiquitous 
CD/DVD readers/writers; surveying instruments; range
finders for docking, agriculture, and forestry; fiber-optic
data transmission systems; security devices; firearm sights;
manufacturing; cameras;, retail checkout counters  in the
early 1960s the preliminary response was that Maiman’s
laser was a solution in search of a problem (Townes, 2003).
Others prognosticated sophisticated, hideous new weap-
For personal use only.
onry; Maiman was dismayed at initial news reports that
characterized his invention as a death ray. Despite the
hyperbole of these early news reports, the international
community acknowledged the contributions of scientists on
both sides of the Iron Curtain. Charles H. Townes (US),
Nikolay Basov and Aleksandr Prokhorov (USSR) were
jointly awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics for
their research (http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/phy-
sics/laureates/1964/press.html [accessed 8 February 2013])
which led to the development of masers and lasers.
Dr. Maiman was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize but
was never awarded the honor.
The first lasers were single-shot instruments; the flash-
lamp would excite the medium, initially a ruby crystal, and
the laser would immediately emit one short pulse of
coherent light. Continuously operating lasers were quickly
developed. Within 7 months of Maiman’s ruby laser
demonstration, Ali Javen, William Bennett, and Donald
Herriot of Bell Labs developed the HeliumNeon (HeNe)
gas laser, the first laser to generate a continuous beam of
coherent light. This continuous wave (CW) laser, first
operated in December 1960, emitted an orange or red
beam at 0.633 mm. By 1961, lasers were being sold
commercially by such companies as Spectra-Physics and
Perkin-Elmer. The field took off, with researchers worldwide
exploring different lasing media, excitation methods, power
capabilities, and beam control procedures. A concise time-
line of the research that fundamentally affected the devel-
opment of the vast array of lasers is available at http://
www.photonics.com/Article.aspx?AID42279 [accessed 7
February2013].
S8
Early lidar work in the natural resources
Initially, with respect to Earth resources, lasers were used
(i) to measure range from aircraft to target and (ii) to induce
fluorescence in a variety of targets. Early lasers deployed to
assess natural resources were used to measure sea ice surface
roughness (Ketchum, 1971; Li et al., 1973; Tooma and
Tucker, 1973; Hibler, 1975), to make near-shore bathymetric
measurements (Hickman and Hogg, 1969; Hoge and Swift,
1979; Hoge et al., 1980), to penetrate forests to make detailed
topographic measurements (Krabill et al., 1980; Arp et al.,
1982), to fluoresce oceanic phytoplankton for surface current
studies (Hoge and Swift, 1981, 1983), to delineate ocean oil
spills (Hoge and Swift, 1980), and to fluoresce terrestrial
vegetation (Hoge et al., 1983). Many of these early studies
employed CW lasers such as a 0.633 mm HeNe laser. Pulsed
lasers began to come to the fore in the late 1970s and early
80s, though one of the first bathymetric studies by Hickman
and Hogg (1969) utilized a pulsed neon, 0.540 mm, gas laser
with a controllable pulse repetition rate of between 1 and 100
pulses per second to estimate water depth in turbid waters of
Lake Ontario down to 8 m (26 ft). Link and Collins (1981)
wrote a summary article that (i) explained differences
between pulsed and CW systems, (ii) provided options to
measure aircraft position and attitude, and (iii) detailed
current (i.e., 1981) applications e.g., water quality studies
that depended on Raman backscatter and fluorescence and
ranging studies for bathymetry and terrain mapping. As late
as 1981 in the US, trees were considered to be a source of
noise rather than as a target of opportunity because
vegetation was regarded as a landscape feature that needed
to be mathematically removed or, at a minimum, occasion-
ally penetrated to characterize topography.
The use of CW lasers by early researchers stand in marked
contrast to the pulsed laser systems that predominate today.
Today’s systems measure the time of flight of individual
pulses to targets, frequently recording multiple returns
(a multistop system) or continuous returns (waveforms) as
a given pulse progresses through a diffuse target such as a tree
canopy to the ground (Lefsky et al., 2002; Lim et al., 2003).
CW lasers retrieve ranging information not by measuring
time of flight of laser pulses or individual photons, but rather
by measuring phase differences between the transmitted,
continuous beam of laser light and the continuously received
return beam. Light can be characterized as a sine wave and
coherent laser light as a sine wave of a given wavelength,
frequency, and amplitude. CW systems retrieve distance by
looking at wave offsets or phase differences, and these wave
offsets can be directly related to a distance from, for instance,
aircraft to target. Necessarily then, these early CW systems
acted as first-return systems, i.e., ranging data was available
only to the first target intercepted by the beam.
Much of the early work in the US was driven by the
Department of Defense whose research interests centered on
topics that might help them advance or defend the interests
of the US. Laser research projects characterizing sea ice
# 2013 CASI
 Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing / Journal canadien de télédétection
thickness, the location and height of pressure ridges, and ice
extent were tied to US ventures under the northern polar
ice cap (e.g., the nuclear submarines Nautilus, Skate, and
Seadragon forays to the North Pole, 19581962) and
subsequent Arctic deployments. Ocean circulation patterns
were of interest to the US Navy as was ocean wave height
determination. Remote sensing of oil spills, both in water
and on land, was given some impetus by the building of the
Trans-Alaska Pipeline (19741977). Interest and funding in
bathymetry was, in part, tied to the Vietnam War (ca. 1964
1975) and the need to map navigable near-shore waters.
Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing Downloaded from pubs.casi.ca by ESA-ESTEC on 05/20/14
The first mention of an airborne laser profiler found by
this author is reported in the proceedings of a symposium
held at the University of Michigan in 1964. Rempel and
Parker (1964) assembled and tested a Spectra-Physics
0.633 mm HeNe CW gas laser coupled to a barometric
sensor (to establish aircraft elevation) and to a nadir-looking
photogrammetric strip camera to record flight line targets.
They did this because the radar profilers in use at the time
were relatively inaccurate, exhibiting errors of approximately
1 foot 9 0.5% (30 cm 9 0.5%) of the flight altitude.
They flew their airborne laser profiling system in an Aero
Commander at various altitudes, e.g., 280 ft (85 m) and
600 ft (183 m) above ground level (AGL). A very sensitive
For personal use only.
strip recorder, an oscillograph, which provides output
visually similar to traces generated by seismographs, EKG
strips, and lie-detectors, was used to record range to target
(Y axis) as the plane progressed along the flight line (X axis).
Unfortunately, this strip recorder overlaid a 0.6 inch
(1.5 cm) high frequency signal atop the laser ranging
measurements, so the traces illustrated in the Rempel and
Parker (1964) manuscript are very coarse. Nevertheless, they
concluded that, with numerous planned improvements, a
one foot (30 cm) ranging accuracy was possible given a
10 foot (3 m) smoothing length from a flight altitude of
10 000 feet (3048 m) AGL. They also made first mention of
possible forestry applications.
‘‘The laser altimeter will be able to show ground elevations,
as well as tree heights, if as little as 5 percent of the forest
cover permits an optical path to the ground.’’ (Rempel and
Parker, 1964, pg. 327)
They also identified additional potential applications, e.g.,
sea ice studies, wave height determination (6 inch (15 cm)
ranging accuracy), and road, railroad, and pipeline surveys.
Petrie and Toth (2009) referred to Jensen and Ruddock
(1965) as the developers of the first operational laser
altimeter used for topographic mapping. It turns out that
Rempel and Parker (1964), Jensen and Ruddock (1965), and
Jensen (1967) all reported on different versions of the same
airborne profiling system. Evidence for this can be found in
the company names of the participants and also by
comparing the perspective drawings of the airborne profiler
(Figure 8 in Rempel and Parker (1964) and the drawing on
page VIII-3 of Jensen (1967)). The profiles provided by
Jensen (1967) are much cleaner; houses, trees, a cornfield
# 2013 CASI
with bushes adjacent, and an orange grove are similar to
what we might see in a pulsed-laser profiler today.
Obviously, they fixed their strip-recorder noise problem.
1965 was also the year that a lidar altimeter was demon-
strated in the UK, measuring topographic elevations
accurate to B 1.5 m at flying heights of 300 m AGL (Petrie
and Toth, 2009).
Hickman and Hogg (1969) flew a high-powered, 0.540 mm
wavelength pulsed neon gas laser with a 3 ns pulse width and
an adjustable pulse repetition frequency (prf) of 1100
pulses per second (pps) at 500 ft (152 m) over Lake Ontario
at night to measure water depth. Soundings down to 26 ft
(8 m) in relatively turbid water were noted, demonstrating
‘‘. . . the feasibility of an airborne bathymetric system for
near-shore beach reconnaissance’’ (Hickman and Hogg,
1969, pg. 57). They also suggested that a high-rep-rate
neon laser (1000 pps) could be adapted to an optical scanner
to create a near-shore mapping system. It is interesting to
note that they mounted their neon laser pitched forward
3 degrees to avoid specular reflection from the water surface,
a technique employed in the ICESat-1/GLAS (Ice, Cloud,
and land Elevation Satellite/Geoscience Laser Altimeter
System) design where the laser optical train was pitched
forward 0.3 degrees to avoid specular reflection from water
and ice surfaces (Neuenschwander et al., 2008). As a general
rule of thumb, a 2 kW neon laser can penetrate the water
column up to a depth approximately 3 times the Secchi
depth; stronger lasers will go deeper (Link and Collins,
1981).
Link (1969) flew a HeNe CW gas laser (l  0.633 mm)
profiling system over 12 study areas, each 1600 ft along-
track  100 ft (488 m  30 m), exhibiting a variety of
terrain conditions that could affect military movements
including ditches, spoil banks, roads, and vegetation. The
laser was flown in conjunction with a barometric altitude
sensor and a stereo camera system, and the flight profiles of
terrain were compared with ground topographic surveys.
The test sites were marked with cloth strips 6 in  100 ft
(15 cm  30 m) laid out perpendicular to the flight path
every 300 ft (91 m). The profiling data from the overflights,
acquired in 1965 in a B-17 flying at 500 ft (152 m), were
recorded on an ocillograph. Results indicated that the
airborne laser profilometer could measure terrain features
with a resolution of 0.3 ft vertical (9 cm) and 1.7 ft (52 cm)
horizontal. He found that the system could not track the
ground in vegetated areas and added that ‘‘This may be an
advantage, however, if vegetation data are desired.’’ (Link,
1969, pg. 191). He also noted that accurate terrain slopes
over large distances were problematic (relative slopes over
short distances were not) and identified the need for aircraft
roll/pitch data and a more accurate aircraft altitude record.
Citing Australian Defence Scientific Service technical
memoranda, Link and Collins (1981) reported that the
Australians were actively engaged in airborne laser research
and applications as early as 1970 (Penny, 1970, 1972). They
used a CW argon laser (l  0.488 mm) profiler to collect
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 Vol. 39, No. S1, Suppl. 1 2013
topographic transects to fill in gaps between reference
elevations arrayed on a 97 km  147 km grid across the
entire country. The system depended on a barometric
pressure sensor to track aircraft altitude and a strip camera
to ascertain beam location. The utility of the system for
topographic mapping was limited in areas with dense
vegetation. Height measurement repeatability was judged
to be 0.5 m in nonvegetated areas.
A number of ice studies were conducted in the early 1970s
to map and measure sea ice characteristics. Ketchum (1971),
reporting on flights in 1968 with a HeNe CW laser over the
Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing Downloaded from pubs.casi.ca by ESA-ESTEC on 05/20/14
Beaufort Sea north of Point Barrow, Alaska, attempted
(i) to measure the height of sea ice ridges, (ii) to measure the
horizontal extent of open water leads, (iii) to differentiate
new ice, first-year ice, and multiyear ice, and (iv) to estimate
ice thickness. Objectives i, ii, and iii were met, but ice
thickness estimates were unacceptable because the variability
in aircraft altitude readings precluded calculation of ice
surface elevation above sea level. He noted that ice devel-
opment, i.e., discriminating new, first-year, multiyear ice,
was facilitated by recording laser return signal intensity.
Ketchum (1971) posited that a uniform, common orienta-
tion of ice crystals in newly forming ice may specularly
reflect the laser beam. He concluded that his ice profiler
For personal use only.
could statistically describe regional ice conditions with
respect to ridge heights, ice development, and extent of
water openings. Tooma and Tucker (1971) extended the
work of Link (1969) and Ketchum (1971) to areas of sea ice
north of Greenland. They compared laser heights to
photogrammetric heights of ice features identifiable in
both sets of data and found that laser values were
consistently less than photo measures but consistently
within 0.3 m.
In 1975, a hydrography workshop (Goodman, 1975) was
held in Rockville, Maryland, bringing together a number of
airborne lidar scientists and engineers to design a multi-
purpose airborne laser profiler and scanning system for
NASA. The new system was to be used for hydrographic
ranging and to fluoresce oceanic phytoplankton, fluorescent
dye (for fresh water and oceanic current studies), and
eventually, terrestrial vegetation. The new airborne system
would eventually become the Wallops Airborne Oceano-
graphic Lidar (AOL) used by Krabill, Hoge, Swift, Maclean,
Nelson, and others. The workshop is notable from three
standpoints.
First, it laid down system requirements for various
applications, requirements that demanded knowledge of
both aircraft position and attitude. To accurately locate a
given laser pulse on the ground, three, possibly four, factors
need to be precisely measured simultaneously: (i) the
position of the laser aircraft relative to some fixed geodetic
coordinate system; (ii) the 3-axis attitude of the laser
aircraft  roll, pitch, and yaw; (iii) the range to target, and
(iv) the angle of the laser beam if the beam is scanned. The
fourth factor need not be considered if a profiling lidar is
locked in position, typically near-nadir, in the aircraft. Early
S10
studies were challenged by equipment limitations, e.g., Z
control was coarse given dependence on barometric readings
or radar altimeters, precise aircraft attitude information was
often not available, and digital recording devices, if used
at all, were new, bulky, and heavy. The 1975 workshop
proceedings are the first mention that this author could find
reporting the use of an inertial navigation system
(INS) onboard an airborne laser platform. The workshop
also called for operation of an airborne laser scanner with
an adjustable prf up to 400 pps and an adjustable conical
scan angle nominally fixed at 158 but which could be
increased to 258.
Second, the workshop highlighted the primary interests of
the participants, those being near-shore bathymetry, Raman
scattering, and fluorosensing.
Third, participants from the Canada Centre for Remote
Sensing (CCRS) informed the workshop as to the progress
that they had made in these research areas. A 1974 paper by
John V. Watt (CCRS), which he presented at the 13th
Annual Hydrographic Conference, was reprinted in the
Goodman (1975) workshop proceedings on pages 1324.
That paper and the one that followed by John Bristow
(CCRS), (pages 2534 in Goodman (1975)), provided
extensive details concerning the CCRS airborne laser system
and work done with that system in Canada over the previous
few years. As of 1974, CCRS listed their fluoroscensing
bathymetric lidar and Litton LTN-51 INS as ‘‘experimen-
tal’’ and a 14-track, high-speed, magnetic tape drive, a
Doppler radar, various photogrammetric cameras, and
1 and 2 channel infrared imaging scanners as ‘‘operational’’.
CCRS interests included (i) remote sensing of laser Raman
scattering to identify aquatic pollutants with an ultraviolet
(UV, 0.337 um), pulsed (9 ns Full Width Half-Maximum
(FWHM)) nitrogen laser; (ii) fluoroscensing with the UV
laser to track aquatic oil pollution and chlorophyllalgae
distributions; and (iii) laser bathymetry with a green (0.540
um) pulsed (3 ns FWHM) neon laser. In bathymetric mode,
the pulse detectors aboard their aircraft, a DC-3, recorded
multiple ranges per pulse, sensing both the water’s surface
and the bottom.
In 1976, Nielsen and Aldred in the Forest Management
Institute, Canadian Forest Service, went to an IUFRO
conference in Oslo and reported on efforts to better estimate
timber volume in tropical forests (Nielsen and Aldred,
1976). They employed large-scale airphotos (1:500 up to
1:4000) to measure the top of the tropical canopy, a radar to
measure the location of the ground beneath the canopy, and
a barometric sensor to record aircraft or radar height above
a datum (e.g., sea level). Their radar ground lines in the
tropical environs were compromised by the dense vegetation,
and they concluded that additional work was needed to
improve their radar. They mentioned in passing that
‘‘Experiments with a laser altimeter . . . have been successful
at providing stand profiles under Canadian conditions
(Figure 9 in Nielsen and Aldred (1976)).’’ In a report two
years later, Nielsen and Aldred (1978) provided details of an
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 Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing / Journal canadien de télédétection
experiment in Costa Rica; the radar ground line was much
improved and no mention was made of a lidar altimeter.
Earlier works by Nielsen, Aldred, and Sayn-Wittgenstein in
Canada as cited by Nielsen and Aldred (1976) indicated that
more attention was paid to radar altimeters rather than to
lidar sensors as the preferred tool to trace ground beneath a
forest canopy.
Arp et al. (1982) reported on 1976 flights employing a CW
HeNe lidar (0.633 mm, 20 cm diameter spot at target from
12001500 m AGL) to collect over 11 000 km of lidar
profiles spaced approximately 1.5 km apart to construct a
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topographic map to help site a new reservoir in dense
tropical jungle in Venezuela. The topographic mapping
process involved (i) acquisition of an airphoto mosaic of
stereo-photos of the reservoir study area, (ii) extension of a
ground control network of geolocated points using a
helicopter to hover over targets identifiable in the photo-
mosaic, and (iii) the acquisition of airborne lidar profiles to
assess tree heights. They used a precise barometric altimeter
for Z control and three local base stations and triangulation
equipment, i.e., an Autotape, in the helicopter for X, Y
control. A B-25 World War II era light bomber was used to
acquire the airborne laser profiling data to measure tree
heights, and those profiles were recorded on a strip chart
For personal use only.
recorder. To solve their ‘‘vegetation problem’’ that masked
the topography, they mapped the tops of the trees using the
stereo photos and subtracted tree heights where laser
profiling data were available, allowing them to draw and
interpolate topographic (ground) contours. They observed
median tropical vegetation heights of 3540 m with
emergents up to 55 m in their profiles. They measured trees
using their lidar profiler, but only so that they could account
for their height offsets so as to make a more accurate
topographic product.
Early lidar work measuring forests
While US researchers were concentrating on more aquatic
pursuits and Canadians were measuring the tops of forest
canopies with stereo photos and ground traces with radars,
Soviet researchers started to look at the possibility of
measuring trees with ranging lasers. Certainly tall grasses,
shrubs, and trees had been noted in laser profiles prior to the
Russian work, but in those cases, measurements of vegeta-
tion height and canopy structure were not the primary
concern. Tree measurements became the primary objective
rather than a source of noise in 1976 when, in the USSR,
Solodukhin et al. (1976, 1977a) felled a birch and a spruce
tree and aimed a HeNe, 0.63 mm laser with a spot size of
approximately 25 mm at the horizontal trees. They produced
a profilograph, compared it with tape measurements, and
concluded that, with increased power, such a laser could be
mounted on an aircraft to remotely measure forest canopies.
Later that year they mathematically explored the effects
of random cross-sectional profiles through stands with
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differently shaped crowns (conic, parabolic, ellipsoidal
vertical, spherical, ellipsoidalhorizontal, and cylindrical)
and deduced how different crown shapes affected laser
profile height retrievals (Solodukhin et al., 1977b). They
found that the arithmetic mean height of a stand of trees
with conical crowns (e.g., spruce) was underestimated by
26.9%, whereas the mean height of larch stands, perhaps
because of their more rounded crown, were underestimated
by 8.1% (Table 2 in Solodukhin et al. (1977b)). Twenty years
later, Nelson (1997), not realizing that Solodukhin et al. had
already done the work, looked at the effects of canopy shape
on height retrievals and found that average height as
measured along a simulated lidar profile increased as
canopy shape morphed from a cone to a parabola, an
ellipsoid, and a sphere. Random transect measurements of
parabolic crowns were 8% taller than conical canopies;
spherical crowns produced profiles that were 26% taller than
conical canopies.
Solodukhin et al. (1979) and Kuliasov et al. (1979)
reported on their first efforts to fly their CW HeNe laser
on an AN-2 biplane and acquired their first profiles in
September 1977. The mission was flown at 160 km/hr at
40 m AGL with the plane carrying the laser profiler, an
oscillograph to record the profiling trace, and a ‘‘slit aerial
camera’’. A ‘‘leveling’’ (presumed photogrammetric) camera
was flown over these same targets in November 1977. Their
selected targets were all relatively short because their
system, limited by the phase cycle, could not resolve
heights  15 m. The spot size at target was approximately
20 mm. They flew over a ‘‘desiccated’’ marsh (Lake
Shirskoye, 65 km S of Leningrad), pine saplings and alder,
and an abandoned brick factory (Figure 1). They reported
differences between ground and airborne profiling lidar
measurements of building heights of 2 to 7 cm. They also
reported that the maximum error in determining ground
elevation beneath a closed forest canopy of 40 cm with aroot
mean square error (RMSE) of 14 cm. Solodukhin et al.
(1979, pg. 45) concluded that their laser system afforded a
very accurate picture of forest canopy profiles and posited
that such profiles ‘‘. . . may serve as the basis for the
automated determination on a computer of the cost indices
of timber stands . . .’’
A year later, Krabill et al. (1980) would report a 50 cm
RMSE of the lidar profile relative to photogrammetric
profiles in closed canopy situations. Over open ground, that
RMSE dropped to 12 cm (Figure 9 in Krabill et al. (1980)).
Perhaps more interesting was that Krabill et al. (1980) began
their report with a description of the Wallops Flight
Facility’s airborne laser scanner, the AOL, the offshoot of
the system designed by the participants in the 1975
Hydrography workshop (Goodman, 1975). The Krabill
report listed the three primary uses of the profiling or
scanning AOL as (i) an airborne bathometer, (ii) an airborne
laser fluorosensing instrument, and (iii) a topographic
mapper. Proposing a terrestrial application of its bathy-
metric capability, they noted that the AOL could be used to
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For personal use only.
Figure 1. Forest profiles (figures 2, 3, 4, and 6 from Solodukhin et al. (1979)) near Lake
Shirskoye, approximately 60 km south of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). The backdrop is a
picture of Lake Shirskoye. The profile was acquired using an airborne laser mounted in an
AN-2 biplane flying 40 m AGL.
measure tree heights. ‘‘In this application the tree canopy
acts much as a water surface, reflecting a portion of the
energy directly back to the aircraft while a part of the energy
continues on to the forest floor to be reflected back to the
aircraft.’’ (Krabill et al., 1980, pg. 2). The 1980 AOL
instrument, housed in a C-54 Skymaster and later in a
P-3, had onboard a computer and a magnetic tape drive to
digitally record the ranging measurements from the 2 kW
neon gas lidar (0.540 mm) emitting up to 400 pps. It also had
a Litton LTN-51 Inertial Navigation System providing real-
time roll and pitch, a vertical accelerometer to better
monitor aircraft elevation, and a photogrammetric camera
that acquired sequential 9 inch  9 inch color photos.
Marking flight lines on the ground was still challenging,
depending as always on cloth strips, weather balloons, and,
at night, strobe lights. They reported that pilots could
usually fly the marked line to within 9 30 m. Data
acquisition height for these 4-engine turboprops was
typically 150300 m AGL. Ground reference with respect
to where the laser actually tracked was supplied by the
coincident airphotos.
Two years later, in July 1982, tethered meteorological
balloons and orange tarps were used to guide the Wallops
P-3 onto a 14 km flight line that ran along a mountain ridge
in south-central Pennsylvania near Doubling Gap (Nelson
et al., 1984). The oakhickory forests at the south end of this
line had been, over the previous two months, completely
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defoliated by the gypsy moth (Lymantria dispar L.); canopy
closure was near-zero. At the north end of the line, the
hardwood forest had not suffered the gypsy moth outbreak
and canopy closures were near 100%. The AOL, then
currently configured with a nitrogen laser (l  0.337 mm)
operating as a profiler, acquired ranging measurements at
400 hz. With an aircraft speed of 100 m/s, pulses were
emitted every 0.25 m along-track. New electronics allowed
the AOL to function as a truncated waveform system. After
a preset, fixed delay, a 12 m vertical window opened and the
system would record laser return intensities every 2 ns
(30 cm) so that, in the post-processing phase, analysts could
attempt to find a ground spike in the foreshortened wave-
form beneath the first return. Various lidar height and
density metrics were compared with similar photointer-
preted quantities derived from coincident stereo airphotos
along 1 s (approx. 100 m) segments of the lidar profiles.
Results were significant but relatively weak, e.g., laser versus
photointerpreted density R2 approximately 0.6. Variables
that proved useful for predicting photointerpreted canopy
density included (i) the proportion of pulses where a ground
spike was identified in the waveform, and (ii) the cross-
sectional area between the top-of-canopy and terrain along 1 s
(approx. 100 m) segments. Tree heights measured on air-
photos using a parallax bar were compared with lidar heights
(n  15). Lidar means were within 0.6 m of photointerpreted
heights though the range of the photointerpreted heights
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 Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing / Journal canadien de télédétection
were twice the lidar ranges. As Krabill et al. (1984, pg. 693)
concluded, at this point in time, ‘‘. . . the greatest remaining
obstacle to the implementation of airborne lidar techniques
to terrain profiling over forest-covered areas is the aspect of
inflight navigation.’’ Airborne lasers provide accurate ran-
ging data, but knowledge concerning the location and
attitude of the aircraft calls into question the location of
the laser’s ground trace. In short, pilots could not hit
marked targets reliably (9 30 m) and analysts had to
depend on airphotos to identify where the plane and laser
beam tracked. Groundlidar comparisons were an exercise
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in approximation.
While many of the first laser systems were flying in large
propeller-driven, 2- or 4-engine aircraft, McDonough et al.
(1980) described an airborne laser profiling system designed
for smaller aircraft such as a single-engine Cessna 206 or
twin-engine Cessna 310. This all-digital system recorded
(i) waveform measurements from a 10 hz yttrium
aluminumgarnet (YAG) (l  1.064 mm, 0.532 mm
frequency-doubled) profiling lidar; (ii) microwave ranges to
3 reference base stations to track aircraft X, Y position every
2 s; (iii) barometric pressure for aircraft Z control, and
(iv) digital aircraft roll and pitch. They used a 35 mm
boresighted camera to record the ground transect. In a
For personal use only.
nominal flight profile (915 m AGL, 216 km/hr (60 m/s)), the
system illuminated a 3 m diameter spot on the ground every
6 m. Simulations indicated that the system would penetrate
Costa Rican jungle canopies even when 99% of the incident
pulses were occluded by green vegetation.
Schreier et al. (1984) reported on the latest version of a
Canadian airborne profiling lidar system, previous versions
of which had been flying, some in small aircraft, for almost
10 years. They used coincidently acquired stereo photos and
ground surveys to assess the accuracy and precision of their
2000 hz, galliumarsenide, 0.904 mm, pulsed-laser profiles.
System limitations were such that only every 5th pulse could
be recorded, limiting their prf to an effective rate of 400 pps.
They flew their system over the Petawawa National Forestry
Institute outside of Chalk River, Ontario, and over a
photogrammetric test site near Sudbury, Ontario. Calibra-
tion results indicated that (i) pulse locations beneath the
DC-3 aircraft could wander as much as 30 m over a 10 s
period due to aircraft attitude changes, i.e., variations in roll
and pitch; (ii) laser-photo height differences on three
flight lines were 0.05 9 0.61 m, 0.24 9 0.64 m, and
0.01 9 0.90 m; (iii) 95% of all laser heights were within
1.8 m of photo heights; and (iv) laser profile versus ground
survey comparisons indicated that the laser profiles were
‘‘. . . significantly more variable than the ground survey
profile’’ on vegetated (grass, fern) surfaces, i.e., 33 9 23 cm
versus a sandy surface, 18 9 16 cm. They also noted that if
aircraft attitude changes are not taken into account, then
laser-photo differences essentially doubled, i.e., with INS:
0.24 9 0.64 m versus without INS: 0.49 9 1.12 m, due
solely to laser-photo co-registration inaccuracy. A year later
Schreier et al. (1985), using the same lidar system, assessed
# 2013 CASI
the utility of normalized lidar height measurements, lidar
mean reflectance (0.904 mm), and the lidar reflectance
variability (%CV) to see if they could be used to differentiate
simple land cover types, e.g., conifer, hardwood, mixedwood,
muskeg, grass, and bare sand. They concluded that
(i) conifers could be differentiated from hardwoods based
on lidar reflectance and reflectance variability measures, and
(ii) simple vegetation and terrain classifications could be
computed and digitally input to a GIS by combining
reflectance variables with height measures and location
information from their INS.
Aldred and Bonner (1985), in addition to providing a
succinct summary of early Canadian altimeter work both
with radars and CW lasers, also reported a remarkably
comprehensive set of results based on the use of two pulsed-
laser systems. They retrieved waveforms using a 10 hz
neodimium-doped: yttriumaluminumgarnet (Nd:YAG)
laser (l  1.064 mm, also frequency-doubled to 0.532 mm)
with selectable beam divergences. They also tested a
‘‘production’’, or off-the-shelf, first-return, Nd:YAG laser
with adjustable firing rates up to 320 pps. Both were flown
in areas in the general vicinity of Ottawa over conifer,
hardwood, and mixedwood forests, suburban areas, swamps,
open grasslands, fields, and rock outcrops, both leaf-on and
leaf-off. Coincident stereo airphotos were used to locate
laser measurements on the ground and to measure canopy
heights and stand densities. They noted that the systematic
underestimation of laser measurements of stand heights
could be mitigated by increasing beam divergence and
concluded that ‘‘pulsed laser technology’’ (i.e., waveform
retrievals) could accurately measure stand heights within
94.1 m at the 95% level of confidence. Crown cover density
classes could be discerned, but softwood and (or) hardwood
cover type discrimination was beyond the capability of the
height and density measurements acquired by pulsed wave-
form lasers. They suggested that future work should
consider the utility of airborne lidar measurements for
volume and biomass estimation.
Estimating forest volume and biomass
In 1984, Gordon Maclean published his University of
Wisconsin Masters thesis (Maclean and Martin, 1984) in
which he photogrammetrically measured forest canopy
profiles (no lasers involved) and related these stereophoto
profiles to timber volume (Figure 3 in Maclean and Martin
(1984)). He concluded that although measurements of dbh
and height on the ground would yield more accurate results,
his canopy profile metrics accounted for a high percentage
of the variation in logarithmically transformed timber
volume. He also concluded that these profile-area versus
log-volume relationships were species-specific. Over the next
two years, working at Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia,
Maclean and Krabill (1986) applied the same methodology
to airborne lidar profiles and concluded that (i) airborne
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 Vol. 39, No. S1, Suppl. 1 2013
profiles were linearly related to the volume, R2  0.73,
RMSE  36.6 m3/ha; (ii) an exponential model,
i.e., log(volume)  f(airborne profiling lidar metrics), met
regression assumptions of homoskedasticity and normality
better; and (iii) stratification by tree species improved
volume estimates. Airborne lasers could be used to predict
the amount of wood on the ground, and the area of the lidar
profile along a segment of set length could be used to
accurately estimate timber volume. Upon reflection, this
relationship between profile area and volume is no surprise
as, given a constant segment length, the average height of all
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first returns in a segment is equal to (profile area) divided by
(segment length). Nelson et al. (1988a, 1988b), using
profiling data acquired by the Wallops lidar over a southern
pine forest in SW Georgia, extended this work to include the
prediction of biomass and to assess the repeatability of near-
coincident flight lines. Repeat estimates of volume, biomass,
and lidar height measures were within 3.2%6.1% on 3
different flight lines where separation distances varied from
15 to 60 m, on average.
Discussion  building on the past
For personal use only.
Subsequent work by an international pool of talented
scientists and engineers has added greatly to our knowledge
base over the last 25 years. Huge technological and scientific
gains have been made, facilitated by GPS and GLONASS
geopositioning; better INS systems to keep track of the
orientation and location of the laser aircraft during a data
collection campaign; and smaller, faster computers and
better digital recording devices to store the phenomenal
data loads. Absolute geolocation accuracies of individual
scanning laser shots are now typically less than 2 m without
base stations and B B1 m with local base stations within
5060 km of the flight path. Multiple-return or waveform
ranging data are now routinely collected on each pulse. CW
lasers, effectively first-return systems, are long a thing of the
past with respect to forestry lidar applications. Within the
last decade, lidar engineers have overcome the problem of
keeping track of multiple pulses in the air, and now prfs of
some airborne laser scanning (ALS) systems exceed 350
kHz, a rate more than 3 orders of magnitude faster than the
first pulsed-laser system (1100 pps) employed by Hickman
and Hogg (1969).
Today, the technology is such that the forestry-lidar
community can digitally look at and measure an individual
tree in submetre detail, either from above using ALS or from
the ground using terrestrial laser scanners (TLS). ALS
systems are now routinely used to collect stand level and
regional wall-to-wall forest mensuration data for forest
management in some countries, primarily in northern
Europe (Næsset et al., 2004; Næsset, 2007). Recent work
with high-resolution ( 10 shots/m2) multistop ALS
systems in mature tropical forests indicate that evidence of
forest disturbance  skid trails, small feeder roads hidden by
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the overstory  can be clearly identified and delineated by
utilizing within-canopy density and height metrics to
measure near-ground canopy closure (d’Oliveira et al.,
2012). Preliminary studies suggest that such techniques
may be employed to address REDD (Reducing Emissions
from Deforestation and forest Degradation) issues related to
identifying sites that have been selectively logged, a topic
which, up to this point, has been difficult to address using
optical data. Robust lidar-based statistical designs have been
developed (Ståhl et al., 2011; Gregoire et al., 2011),
validated (Ene et al., 2012), and refined (Ene et al., 2013).
These designs integrate ground plot measurements with
airborne lidar transect samples to provide large-area esti-
mates of forest volume, biomass, and carbon (Wulder et al.,
2012a). Airborne lidars are also being integrated (or at least
considered for integration) into national forest inventory
plans, especially in those states or countries that support
extensive tracts of remote, inaccessible forest, e.g., Alaska
(Andersen et al., 2011) and Canada (Wulder et al., 2012b).
Waveform data from a space lidar, ICESat/GLAS, have been
used to create global forest height maps (Lefsky, 2010;
Simard et al., 2011; Los et al., 2012) and to make estimates
of circumpolar boreal forest biomass (C. Neigh, personal
communication, 2012) and circumtropical forest biomass
(Saatchi et al., 2011).
Thanks in part to the efforts of early inventors, engineers,
and researchers, the airborne lidar community may, at this
juncture, consider itself a mature (i.e., operational) science.
But from the standpoint of large-area inventory, challenges
and opportunities still lie ahead. Among these is the
continued development of robust, statistically defensible
inventory designs that integrate ground plots with both
wall-to-wall ALS data or sampled ALS or profiling data.
First among these sources are ALS sampling variability
(assuming the ALS is used as a sampling tool rather than to
provide wall-to-wall coverage) and model error, i.e., the
variance component associated with the variability of the
coefficients of a model used to predict, for instance, volume
or aboveground biomass. Other sources of error should be
assessed to see if they merit inclusion in analytic variance
expressions, e.g., allometric error, ground plot measurement
error. Second, with respect to airborne lidar acquisitions, it
would be most helpful to integrate existing thematic maps
with forest measurements using profiling or ALS data such
that inventory information stratified into land cover types
can be generated in flight, ‘‘real-time’’. Given the develop-
ment of predictive equations before the flight mission, one
can envision a software and hardware package that can
literally inventory vast tracts ‘‘on-the-fly’’ such that the
regional inventory is complete when or very soon after the
laser aircraft lands after acquiring its last sample flight line.
Third, robust estimators must be extended to include three-
phase or three-stage designs that incorporate (i) space assets,
(ii) airborne lidars flying beneath those space acquisitions,
and (iii) ground plots. These space assets might provide wall-
to-wall coverage of forest structure (e.g., space radars such
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 Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing / Journal canadien de télédétection
as the ALOS/PALSAR L-band radar), or they may sample
the landscape (e.g., the ICESat/GLAS waveform lidar or the
planned ICESat-2 photon-counting, multibeam profiler, due
to launch in 2016). At a minimum, these three- phase and
three-stage designs should account for first-phase and first-
stage sampling error, if any (for instance, the sampling
variance associated with GLAS orbits), and all model
variance components.
Fifty years ago, the forestry lidar community did not exist.
We are where we are today because of the work of a relative
few who toiled under challenging circumstances in many
Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing Downloaded from pubs.casi.ca by ESA-ESTEC on 05/20/14
countries  Australia, Canada, Russia/USSR, the United
Kingdom, the United States, and Venezuela  to investigate
and eventually make operational a new technology  air-
borne laser ranging. Their early work can be easily over-
looked, for much of it rests in obscure reports resting on
dusty shelves in government offices with acronyms associated
with bureaucracies that no longer exist. It is this author’s
hope that this publication fairly places credit where credit
is due and that it provides a context for much of the
initial airborne lidar research that was done between 1960
and 1985.
For personal use only.
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