The session brings together provincial leadership in LiDAR-enabled inventory and product development with practical, hands-on experience implementing open-source and low-cost tools in forestry operations across British Columbia.

This session offers a comprehensive introduction to LiDAR technology from a forest professionals’ perspective. The focus is on understanding what LiDAR is, the types of core products available, including point clouds, digital elevation models (DEM), digital terrain models (DTM), digital surface models (DSM), and canopy height models and how these datasets can be transformed into powerful mapping and planning resources. Emphasis is placed on practical adoption of the province’s LiDAR program, with consideration given to leveraging open-source and low-cost tools rather than relying on expensive software solutions.

Derivative products from the Forest Analysis and Inventory Branch (FAIB) demonstrate how LiDAR-enhanced layers such as canopy height models, structure metrics, treetop data, and related datasets can be efficiently downloaded and used for forestry analysis. Participants will see how these tools support various LiDAR-based inventory methods, from Tier 1 to Tier 3.

Through practical examples, the session will showcase several recommended open-source applications for working with LiDAR data. These include CloudCompare for visualization and measurement, QGIS for terrain, slope, and overlay analysis, and R/LAStools for deriving metrics and processing point clouds. Additionally, use cases for RoadEng beyond road design will be discussed, illustrating its versatility within forestry workflows.

Learning Outcomes
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

1. Locate and obtain provincial LiDAR data and download FAIB derivative products by tile.
2. Identify which FAIB derivatives are most useful for common forestry questions (inventory, terrain, access, hydrology, multi-value planning).
3. Understand outputs such as CHMs, canopy structure metrics, treetop layers, and terrain/slope products for planning and decision support.
4. Select appropriate open-source/low-cost tools for key tasks (CloudCompare, QGIS, R/LAStools, RoadEng).