ForestScan: Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) of FBRMS-01: Paracou, French Guiana 1ha plot IRD-CNES, October 2021

Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) was conducted in October 2021 by G. Vincent and J-L Smock (IRD) using a Riegl VZ-400. Scans were acquired at locations on a 10 m Cartesian grid. Capturing a complete sample of the scene at each location requires two scans (upright and tilted), owing to a 100° field of view. 249 scans in total were collected. The angular resolution between sequentially fired pulses was 0.04°, resulting in approximately 22.4 million emitted pulses per scan (i.e., 5.42 billion per ha). Up to four targets can be resolved per pulse, with a nominal ranging accuracy of 5 mm. The laser itself is characterised by a beam divergence of 0.35 mrad, and the diameter of the beam at emission is 7 mm (e.g., the diameter of the beam at a range of 50 m, would be 21 mm). The pulse repetition rate was 300 kHz, therefore, each scan took approximately 3 minutes to complete. To generate a plot-level point cloud from individual scans, all scans were co-registered and projected to a standard geographical coordinate system (epsg 2972). To this end, 5 identifiable targets with known X,Y,Z coordinates (plot corners + plot centre) were positioned using a total station.

Once co-registered using RiScanPro software, individual scans were exported in las extrabyte format (including deviation) using LidarFomartConverter v.1.2.(AMAP code based on RivLib). Reflectance range was set to -30dB to +5dB and stored in the Intensity field as a long integer. Echoes outside this reflectance range were discarded. Coordinate precisions were set to 0.001 m. The full point cloud (all 249 scans) was then cropped to 1.4 ha plot (+10m buffer around 100x100m plot), and tiled per 20 x 20m (no buffer). Cropping and tiling were done with LAStools software. Scan position number was stored as flight line to allow selection of scans if needed. In particular, distant scans which contribute little more than noise could be deleted. LiDAR data were acquired without the “reflectance optimization filter”. In order to keep only returns with reflectance above -20dB (equivalent to setting reflectance optimization filter) all returns with Intensity below 18724 were dropped.

Date (Publication): 2025-03-28T15:05:15

Date (Creation): 2025-03-28T15:05:15

Citation identifier: https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/b1cd34f6af7941a3b1429ac52a3f6b28

Citation identifier: NERC EDS Centre for Environmental Data Analysis / b1cd34f6af7941a3b1429ac52a3f6b28

Citation identifier: doi / 10.5285/b1cd34f6af7941a3b1429ac52a3f6b28

Point of contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
Unavailable	Vincent, Grégoire	Unavailable	Author
Unavailable	Villard, Ludovic	Unavailable	Author
NERC EDS Centre for Environmental Data Analysis		support@ceda.ac.uk	Custodian
NERC EDS Centre for Environmental Data Analysis		support@ceda.ac.uk	Distributor
Unavailable	Disney, Mathias	Unavailable	Principal investigator
Unavailable	Villard, Ludovic	Unavailable	Principal investigator
NERC EDS Centre for Environmental Data Analysis		support@ceda.ac.uk	pointofContact
NERC EDS Centre for Environmental Data Analysis		support@ceda.ac.uk	Publisher

Maintenance and update frequency: Unknown

Update scope: Dataset

Keywords

ForestScan project
GEO-TREES
BIOMASS mission
European Space Agency (ESA)
Earth Observation (EO) calibration/validation
Terrestrial LiDAR Scanning (TLS)
Digital twins
Forest structure
3D tree structure

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

orthoimagery

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Other constraints: Under the following licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, appropriate use of these data may fall under any use. This message is intended as guidance, always read the full licence. When using these data you must cite them correctly using the citation given on the CEDA Data Catalogue record.

Spatial representation type: Grid

Language: English

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Imagery base maps earth cover

Begin date: 2021-10-19T00:00:00

End date: 2021-10-29T00:00:00

Unique resource identifier: WGS 84

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.laz files

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Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
NERC EDS Centre for Environmental Data Analysis		support@ceda.ac.uk	Distributor

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	https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/b1cd34f6af7941a3b1429ac52a3f6b28	CEDA Data Catalogue Page

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	http://data.ceda.ac.uk/neodc/forestscan/data/french_guiana/paracou/TLS-Paracou-2021-CNESplot	DOWNLOAD

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2025-67/	Chavana-Bryant, C., Wilkes, P., Yang, W., Burt, A., Vines, P., Bennett, A.C., Pickavance, G., Cooper, D.L.M., Lewis, S.L., Phillips, O.L., Brede, B., Lau, A., Herold, M., McNicol, I.M., Mitchard, E.T.A., Barbier, N., Vincent, G., Coomes, D.A., Jackson, T., Makaga, L., Milamizokou Napo, H.O., Ngomanda, A., Ntie, S., Medjibe, V., Dimbonda, P., Soenens, L., Daelemans, V., Bartholomeus, H., Majalap, N., Nilus, R., Labrière, N., Burslem, D.F.R.P., Qie, L., Derroire, G., Proux, L., Abernethy, K., Jeffery, K., Clewley, D., Moffat, D., Scipal, K. and Disney, M. ForestScan: a unique multiscale dataset of tropical forest structure across 3 continents including terrestrial, UAV and airborne LiDAR and in-situ forest census data. ESSD. 2025

Hierarchy level: Dataset

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Title: Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services

Date (Publication): 2010-12-08

Statement: Data were produced by the project team and supplied for archiving at the Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA) by Gregoire Vincent. The UCL project team provided revised metadata for the catalogue record

Metadata

File identifier: b1cd34f6af7941a3b1429ac52a3f6b28 XML

Metadata language: English

Character set: UTF8

Parent identifier: ForestScan Collection
88a8620229014e0ebacf0606b302112d

Hierarchy level: Dataset

Date stamp: 2026-02-25T03:25:29

Metadata standard name: UK GEMINI

Metadata standard version: 2.3

Metadata author

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
NERC EDS Centre for Environmental Data Analysis		support@ceda.ac.uk	Point of contact

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