SimpleForest - a tree modelling software
Posted on March 14th, 2020 by Jan Hackenberg
SimpleForest is an open source plugin for the Computree platform. Both the plugin as well as the
platform are written in C++. The plugin itself is licensed under the
Gnu General Public License and utilizes the following libraries:
PCL,
OpenCV,
Eigen,
FLANN,
Boost,
QT and
GSL.
SimpleForest produces so called quantitative structure models (QSMs) from point clouds. A QSM is a tree model build with topological ordered cylinders. It allows output
generation in form of csv files, which can further be processed with interactive tree modelling software such as
Amap studio
or analyzed statistically in
R. Additionally ply files can be generated and loaded into meshing software like
CloudCompare,
MeshLab or
Blender.
The world's forests bind a significant amount of carbon. While the majority of earth's carbon is bound under the surface of the earth, this carbon is not in contact with
the atmosphere. We can ignore this carbon in the sense of climate change. The green house effect caused by Co2 is modelled by the carbon which is already within our
atmosphere or in contact with our atmosphere - the so called carbon cycle. Forests are a major sink of circulating carbon, but forest degradation yet leads to a carbon increase.
From IPCC - Mitigation of Climate Change:
In spite of a large range across global Forestry and Other Land Use (FOLU) flux estimates, most approaches indicate a decline in FOLU carbon dioxide (CO2) emis-sions over
the most recent years, largely due to decreasing deforestation rates and increased afforestation (limited evidence, medium agreement).
In mitigation scenarios with idealized comprehensive climate policies, agriculture, forestry, and bioenergy contribute substantially to the reduction
of global CO2, CH4, and N2O emissions, and to the energy system, thereby reducing policy costs (medium evidence; high agree-ment).
Anthropogenic forest degradation and biomass burning (forest fires and agricultural burning) also represent relevant contributions. (here increase in C02 is
referenced to
Spreading of forest fires can be simulated and adaptations can be made.
From
IPCC Summary for Policymakers:
Impacts associated with other biodiversity-related risks such as forest fires and the spread of invasive species are lower at 1.5°C compared
to 2°C of global warming (high confidence.
While deforestation is dangerous as bounded carbon will enter the atmosphere, forests can also be used for renewable energy if planned responsible.
From
Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation:
Bioenergy can be produced from a variety of biomass feedstocks, including forest, agricultural and livestock residues; short-rotation forest plantations; energy crops; the
organic component of municipal solid waste; and other organic waste streams.
Detailed computer models can help in the prediction of forest inventory. They can give an answer to how much carbon is bound right now.
News and updates
Posted on October 4th, 2021 by Jan Hackenberg
Publication of Improving quantitative structure models with filters based on allometric scaling theory.
Implementation of forums.
Update of the Download section with scripts.
Update of the following statistical sections with SimpleForest results: Evaluation for each destructive data set, Evaluation on the combined data sets and Comparison between SimpleForest and TreeQSM results.
Update of SimpleForest to v5.3.2.
Update of SimpleForest to v5.2.13.
Update of SimpleForest to v5.2.3.
Update of SimpleForest to v5.2.1.
Update of SimpleForest to v5.1.3.
Update of the R - statistics section.
Update of SimpleForest to v5.1.1.
First version of Simple Forest homepage created.