Estimating fractional vegetation cover using the hand-held laser range finder: method and validation

The fractional vegetation cover is an important parameter of the earth surface system. Its ground measurement is the basis in the remotely sensed data-based vegetation inversion modelling. At present, the ground measurement methods include mainly the human ocular estimation method, the sampling method and the photographic method. However the ocular estimation method has the issue of low accuracy, and the sampling method needs to conduct some complicated operations while the photographic method is restricted by the height at which the camera can be placed. This article proposes a method using a hand-held laser range finder to make quick observation on fractional vegetation cover of low shrub vegetation. Using binomial distribution, this model established a probability distribution model about the measurement errors to calculate the fractional vegetation cover with various sampling numbers. Two experiments and one simulation using a computer were done in order to validate the method. The result shows that the fractional vegetation cover obtained by using the hand-held laser range finder can meet the precision requirements. In addition to its high precision, this method is simple in operation and calculation if compared with the traditional ground measurement methods.