Low Density ALS Data to Support Forest Management Plans: The Alta Val Di Susa Forestry Consortium (NW Italy) Case Study

LiDAR systems are evolving very rapidly. In recent years, in fact, the forest sector is largely taking advantage of such evolving progress. Aerial LiDAR (ALS) capability of collecting large amounts of data can directly influence the cost of ordinary in-field forest measurements. A great availability of freely ac-cessible LiDAR data archives from public institutions, often obtained for differ-ent purposes than the forestry one, can, however, enormously contribute to for-ests management. The present study, based on pre-processed and freely available LiDAR-derived DTM and DSM from the Piemonte Region (NW Italy), is a fur-ther demonstration that forest planning can be valuable supported by this type of data, that proved to be able to support Forest Settlement Plans redaction. In this study, an estimate (and mapping) of the main forest structural parameters over a test area was achieved with an accuracy consistent with the one ordinarily re-quired by planners when reviewing/setting up a new forest management plan. Moreover, this work proved that free official open data coupled with the current availability of free advanced software for data processing can make this technol-ogy easily transferrable to professionals and territory managers.