3D Point Cloud Data Processing - Open Source Geospatial Tools: Applications in Earth Observation - page 273

(a) (b)

VHM (m)
5
10
15
20
25
30
35

Intensity
low
medium
high

0 250 500 m 0 250 500 m

Fig. 15.5 Tree heights and intensity for a forested area. a Vegetation height model. b Intensity
product

15.4.4 LiDAR Intensity

Recent LiDAR instruments do record the energy of the return pulse, referred to as
the intensity. We can create the intensity raster product using the utility pklas2img
with the option -n intensity . The result for our example forest area is shown
in Fig. 15.5 b.

pklas2img -i forest_31370.laz -comp median -fir first -n
→

intensity-dx 1 -dy 1 -ulx 56255.793 -uly 196911.650 -lrx

→

57229.293 -lry 195293.160 -a_srs epsg:31370 -ot Float32

→

-o forest_intensity.tif

-i forest_31370.laz
Name of the input LAZ point cloud.
-comp median
Report the median value for overlapping points per grid cell.
-fir first
Filter points: select first returns only (concentrate on top of canopy returns).