Hemispherical photography has been used since the 1960s in forest ecology. Nevertheless, specific constraints related to film cameras have progressively prevented widespread adoption of this photographic method. Advances in digital photographic technology hold great promise to overcome the major drawbacks of hemispherical photography, particularly regarding field techniques and image processing aspects. This contribution is aimed to: (i) provide a basic foreground of digital hemispherical photography; (ii) illustrate the major strengths and weakness of the method; (iii) provide an reliable protocol for image acquisition and analysis, to get the most out of using hemispherical photography for canopy properties extraction.
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Citation
Chianucci F, Cutini A (2012). Digital hemispherical photography for estimating forest canopy properties: current controversies and opportunities. iForest 5: 290-295. - doi: 10.3832/ifor0775-005
Academic Editor
Roberto Tognetti
Paper history
Received: Sep 13, 2012
Accepted: Nov 13, 2012
First online: Dec 17, 2012
Publication Date: Dec 28, 2012
Publication Time: 1.13 months
© SISEF - The Italian Society of Silviculture and Forest Ecology 2012
Open Access
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
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