Forests play an important role in biodiversity conservation, being one of the main providers of ecosystem services, according to the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity. The functions and ecosystem services provided by forests are various concerning the natural capital and the socio-economic systems. Past decades of remote-sensing advances make it possible to address a large set of variables, including both biophysical parameters and ecological indicators, that characterize forest ecosystems and their capacity to supply services. This research aims to identify and implement existing methods that can be used for evaluating ecosystem services by employing airborne and terrestrial stationary laser scanning on plots from the Southern Carpathian mountains. Moreover, this paper discusses the adaptation of field-based approaches for evaluating ecological indicators to automated processing techniques based on airborne and terrestrial stationary laser scanning (ALS and TLS). Forest ecosystem functions, such as provisioning, regulation, and support, and the overall forest condition were assessed through the measurement and analysis of stand-based biomass characteristics (e.g., trees’ heights, wood volume), horizontal structure indices (e.g., canopy cover), and recruitment-mortality processes as well as overall health status assessment (e.g., dead trees identification, deadwood volume). The paper, through the implementation of the above-mentioned analyses, facilitates the development of a complex multi-source monitoring approach as a potential solution for assessing ecosystem services provided by the forest, as well as a basis for further monetization approaches.

中文翻译：

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TLS 和 ALS 在评估森林生态系统服务中的应用：南喀尔巴阡山脉案例研究

根据生态系统和生物多样性经济学，森林在生物多样性保护中发挥着重要作用，是生态系统服务的主要提供者之一。森林提供的功能和生态系统服务在自然资本和社会经济系统方面是多种多样的。过去几十年的遥感技术进步使我们能够处理大量变量，包括生物物理参数和生态指标，它们表征森林生态系统及其提供服务的能力。本研究旨在通过在南喀尔巴阡山脉的地块上采用机载和地面固定激光扫描来确定和实施可用于评估生态系统服务的现有方法。而且，本文讨论了基于现场的生态指标评估方法对基于机载和地面固定激光扫描（ALS 和 TLS）的自动化处理技术的适应性。通过测量和分析基于林分的生物量特征（例如，树木的高度、木材体积）、水平结构指数（例如，冠层覆盖)，以及补充死亡率过程以及整体健康状况评估（例如，死树识别、死木量）。该文件通过实施上述分析，促进了复杂的多源监测方法的发展，作为评估森林提供的生态系统服务的潜在解决方案，