Regarding activities related to sustainable forests management, the spatial
location of information is a very important factor, which requires tools capable of
acquiring this data and handling them in a georeferenced format. For this reason, forest
management has rapidly incorporated geospatial tools offered by new information
technologies. Two important technologies used are Geographical Information Systems
(GIS) and the remote sensing technology known as LIDAR (Light Detection and
Ranging).Forestry applications of these technologies can be grouped into two broad
categories: (i) Inventory and monitoring of natural resources; and (ii) Analysis and
modeling of resources to facilitate sustainable planning and management. The first
category is designed to measure the surface area, quantity, composition and condition
of forest and natural resources of a management area. Thus, foresters use the LIDAR
technology for acquiring digital information on the structure of the forest and the
terrain; this information, properly processed with a GIS, helps analysts in assessing the
health of the forest, calculating and classifying forest biomass, classifying land, or
identifying soil drainage patterns, among other things. In the second category, once the
above mentioned information has been mapped in a GIS environment, it is accessible
to managers and researchers who can analyze and create models that optimize the
decision-making on the resources under management, facilitating and optimizing forest
planning. Therefore, wood felling can be scheduled in a sustainable way, as well as the
design of firefighting infrastructures or the optimization of any other decisions related
to use of resources or the protection of wildlife. This chapter aims to make the reader
familiar with some variables of sustainable forest management, and with their
integration into a GIS environment, as well as to introduce the basics of LIDAR
technology and its powerful capabilities to acquire useful information for forest
managers and planners.
Keywords: Digital Surface Models (DSM), Forest biomass appraisal, Forest
management and planning, Geographical Information Systems (GIS), Geospatial
tools, Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR), LAS file.
