Remote Sensing In Forest Mensuration

The first attempts to introduce aerial photographs as a remote-sensing tool in forestry were made in 1887. An airborne balloon was used as a photographic platform to produce photographs of forests in the vicinity of Berlin. The objective was to examine the possibility of preparing forest maps from aerial photographs and, in addition, to classify and describe the forest on the basis of a visual examination of the photographs. Aerial photography from aircraft was introduced during World War II, primarily for military purposes. It stimulated rapid technical developments in aerial photography and photogrammetry, which in turn induced applications in other fields, for example, in the exploration of natural resources. Since then aerial photographs have been increasingly used to rationalize mapping operations, but in addition, they are widely used to facilitate orientation in the forest and to stratify the forest.