An area of 170 Ha was captured in order to assess how well the trees in the orchard are performing. This included measuring the heights of the trees, identifying smaller trees in the orchard and if there were missing trees.
Using Machine Learning (ML) would be required to identify the trees so further analysis could be performed on these areas.
Tree Height
After identifying the trees, the height of the trees could be calculated comparing the difference of the Digital Surface Model (DSM) and Digital Terrain Model (DTM). A DSM shows the elevation of each point on the map whereas the DTM smooths out the DTM and calculates the elevation of the ground. Tree heights can then be calculated using: Tree height = DSM – DTM. The following histogram shows the distribution of the heights of trees. The tallest tree was 5.94m.
Tree Volume
The tree volume was calculated for each tree using the lateral area of the tree. The following is a heatmap of the tree volume.
