Fig. 1

Scanning of a tropical rainforest patch with a BLK360 terrestrial laser scanner. a “Continuous chain” sampling design with a 20-m-gridded scanning, illustrated in a 1-ha area. The gray arrows indicate the progress of the scanning, with the current scan location shown as a black dot. Five target sets, each having five targets, were used in total and are represented as colored dots. b Photograph of the scanner and targets placed in the field (credit: E-Ping Rau). c Close-up images for the lightweight scanner and targets. See Appendix-Text 1 and Fig. 18 in the Appendix for more information on how the targets were displaced with the laser scanner