Introduction: The cloud2trees() Processing
Pipeline
The cloud2trees package was developed to streamline the complex process of generating consistent, scalable, and spatially explicit forest and fuels inventories from all types of aerial point cloud data, including both lidar and Digital Aerial Photogrammetry (DAP) products. DAP utilizes techniques, such as Structure-from-Motion (SfM), on overlapping aerial imagery to generate 3D point clouds.
The development of the package was largely spurred by the need among
researchers and managers to efficiently integrate detailed forest
spatial arrangements into modern silviculture and fire management
practices. The core of our package is the all-in-one processing routine:
the cloud2trees() pipeline. Taking raw point cloud data,
this function handles every step of the process, including terrain
modeling, Individual Tree Detection (ITD), and generating a
comprehensive spatial tree list attributed with key biophysical metrics
(e.g., height, diameter, crown bulk density). This guide will walk you
through the function’s essential setup, detail its output files, and
provide a quick demonstration of how to use those outputs to visualize
or further analyze forest structure.