Branches of birch trees have now been seen drooping by as much as 10 centimetres at the tips towards the end of the night.
“It was a very clear effect, and applied to the whole tree,” says András Zlinszky of the Centre for Ecological Research in Tihany, Hungary. “No one has observed this effect before at the scale of whole trees, and I was surprised by the extent of the changes.”
Zlinszky and his colleagues scanned trees in Austria and Finland with laser beams between sunset and sunrise. From the time it takes beams to bounce back from branches and leaves, they could measure the movements of each tree, in three dimensions and at resolutions of centimetres. Read the full article here on New Scientist.
Lidar has been used in scientific research for years, and now it's a standard feature in planning for autonomous vehicles, robotics, and many other applications. These articles in Laser Focus World provide an overview of trends ranging from satellites and forestry studies to self-driving cars.
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