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Laser scanning advancing 3D forest ecology

The fast technical development of laser scanning (LS) has been proved to bring changes to forest surveying, and accordingly, LS has also been actively attempted in the field of forest ecology to expose something new. However, how far may this category of state-of-the-art remote sensing technology act on that traditional field is still an open question of huge interest. To answer this question, we overviewed the potentials of LS on this task and then reviewed our multiple LS-based case studies covering from 3-dimensional (3D) structural growth habits, 3D biochemistry, 3D competition/facilitation to 3D phenology, i.e., the representative make-ups of forest ecology. Such endeavors all pointed to a new era of forest ecology, which we proposed as 3D forest ecology, along with the technical merits of LS getting increasingly stronger. To propel its establishment in the future, we further designed its conceptual framework and figured out its potential challenges ahead. Overall, this research review was dedicated to pushing forward the traditional field of forest ecology into its next 3D stage – a new discipline domain of 3D forest ecology.