Overview of LiDAR technologies and equipment for land cover scanning

The land cover of the Earth’s surface impacts strongly on the climate and environment. Precise monitoring of land cover plays the significant role in the management of the natural resources and planning humanity development. In this sense, a remote sensing is an indispensable tool for study and prediction the global, regional, and local ecological issues. A remote sensing implies the use of satellite, airborne, and terrestrial shootings or their combination. In this book, the airborne and terrestrial shootings are discussed as the factors that contribute greatly in the study of the natural resources. Both types of shooting are based on the laser scanning of areas, using the LiDAR technologies. The terrestrial shooting is executed by the stationary (with a tripod use) and mobile laser scanning systems (using the cars, trams, or ships). At last decades, the laser scanning based on the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) started to be applied. In this chapter, an overview of the LiDAR techniques and equipment for the different types of laser scanning is given.