Research on different slicing methods of acquiring LAI from terrestrial laser scanner data

It has been possible to acquire precise point clouds of surface features using terrestrial laser technology. And it has been a research hot spot to figure up the LAI of a single tree combined point clouds of the tree with gap fraction model. While calculating the LAI using gap fraction model, it is a general procedure to slice the acquired point clouds. Zenith slicing and vertical height slicing are two ways often used for this purpose. We used the point clouds of a single tree with gap fraction model to determine which slicing method is better to compute the LAI, and found: (1) the results of LAI are closely related with the different slicing methods and slicing thickness; (2) the results of LAI apparently deviate from the ground truth when the slicing thickness is very big or very small; (3) the results of LAI are closer to the LAI of field measurements while the slicing thickness is smaller within the appropriate slicing range; (4) within the appropriate slicing range, the vertical height slicing is better than the zenith slicing.