Old-Growth Attributes Prediction in the Coastal Western Hemlock Ecosystem, British Columbia using LiDAR

In order to support the conservation of Old-Growth forests in B.C., it is necessary to identify old-growth forests from other non-old-growth forests. However, the traditional age measurement methods are costly and intractable at landscape scales, also the structural characteristics of old growth are not included.

This study attempts to predict the distribution of old-growth attributes in the Coastal Western Hemlock (CWH) zone in British Columbia using area-based lidar metrics. Lidar point clouds of 61 forestry inventory plots are extracted to generate liDAR metrics to create multilinear regression models for four old-growth attributes: standard deviation of diameter at breast height (DBH), maximum tree DBH, average live crown percentage, and the sum of understory plants percentage.