A Digital Replica of a Marteloscope: A Technical and Educational Tool for Smart Forestry Management

Rapidly evolving surveying and monitoring methods are leading the transition toward more efficient, data-driven forest management practices. Recent research highlights the potential of advanced remote sensing platforms to support “smart” forestry, enabling precise, timely, and cost-effective assessments which inform multi-function management methods and specialized silvicultural practices for each forest type, composition, and structure. We created a digital replica of a marteloscope, which is a forestry tool to practice silvicultural simulations for technicians and students. The selected stand is an official marteloscope included in the Integrate+ Network project coordinated by the European Forest Institute (EFI). We established a framework for data collection and processing to achieve an accurate digital replica, using a mobile laser scanner (MLS) in a European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) forest stand. We extracted the main structural forest parameters (diameter at breast height (DBH) and total height (TH)), using the 3DFin software and we graphically returned the obtained digital replica with the CloudCompare software. We compared the MLS-derived values of DBH (1087 trees) and TH (50 trees) with those from a traditional field survey and obtained a root mean square deviation (RMSD) of 2.38 cm for DBH and 2.42 m for TH. The digital marteloscope can help to visualize and assess the effects of selective thinning options on forest structure. The implementation of these virtual reality or augmented reality applications is a useful step toward smarter forestry and could be further improved.