Ali Fakour - Gorgan University of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources
Amir Mohammad Fakour - Shahid Beheshti Teacher Training College in Mashhad

The skyrocketing rise in spatiotemporal changes in composition, structure and function of forest ecosystems during recent years, it makes inevitable to use remote-sensed data as the main complementary sources. Parallelly, procedures for forest quantification by light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data have been developed at a rapid pace. At this research, the airborne LiDAR data is employed to create Canopy Height Model (CHM). After applying necessary corrections, the final raster map is produced which suggests existent gaps owing to lightning in the forest study area. The result map could be used to detect the temporal change in order to predict the sensitive sites and considering them in future protection plans. This research also illustrates one of the diversified applications of LiDAR method in forest management which is the fundamental goal

Forest, LiDAR, GIS, Remote sensing, Lightning