AN IMAGING device is being used to assess the plant diversity within a rainforest without setting foot there. Greg Asner, an ecologist at the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC, is developing it as a way of measuring deforestation, and the damage done by logging.
Asner uses a laser scanner linked to a spectrometer on board an aircraft to fire visible light towards the ground and analyse the wavelengths that are reflected from the leaves. This generates a three-dimensional map of the chemical composition of the trees, from the canopy to the forest floor, and hence the biodiversity of the forest.…
