Evaluation of the performance of commercial and open source GNSS Real Time Kinematic solutions for geolocating trees in forests

Abstract

Accurate and rapid geolocation of trees in forest stands is an emerging demand in forestry science and at the science/practice interface. Satellite positioning systems (GNSS) with differential correction can rapidly achieve meter-level accuracy in a forest context. As open-source solutions for differential correction are becoming available, we performed two field experiments to show that: (i) real-time differential correction (RTK) is necessary to efficiently retrieve pre-identified trees of interest, which is important for many forest applications; (ii) differential correction can be successfully obtained from an opensource solution (Centipede RTK) within a mature forest stand, yielding meter-level accuracy. This augurs well for the widespread use of these low-cost, open-source systems in the future, provided that the accessibility of the correction signal and the ergonomy of mobile devices continues to improve.