Evaluation of the effect of forest input data on rockfall simulations

Overview & Synopsis

Rockfall simulation models are now able to take into account impacts on trees. Forest maps at operational scale can be derived from statistical inventories or remote sensing such as airborne laser scanning (ALS). The present study compares rockfall simulations results obtained with different forest inputs for three different stands. Results obtained with field and ALS-derived inputs showed little difference regarding energy values but sometimes large ones concerning the proportion of stopped blocks. It also turns out that the spatial heterogeneity and coniferous proportion of trees are critical issues which might be difficult to address at operational scale.