Beyond discrete visibility estimates: single‐scan LiDAR provides an efficient method for 3D viewshed estimation

Abstract For many animals, visual information is crucial for detecting mates, competitors, and predators, selecting and defending territories, and finding resources. Established field methods for estimating visibility, such as use of profile boards, produce estimates constrained to a limited set of directions and distances that do not account for the continuous and multidirectional nature of visual information. The limitations of profile boards have recently been overcome by estimating visibility from terrestrial lidar data; however, gathering data requires intensive field efforts and data processing that limits application to studies of free‐ranging animals. Our goal was to demonstrate an approach for estimating fine‐scale, 3‐dimensional (3D) visibility in the field based on single scans from a terrestrial laser scanner and to compare results with the profile board method. We gathered data from 25 forest plots from 3 vantage points representing different animal eye heights (25 cm, 75 cm, and 155 cm) using 2 methods: 1) segmented 3D viewsheds estimated using single scans from terrestrial laser scanners (ssTLS) and 2) profile boards. Estimates of visibility increased with eye height but did not differ significantly ( P = 0.501) between methods when the viewsheds were segmented to the region of the profile boards. However, the profile boards could not provide the comprehensive and flexible information associated with viewsheds. We demonstrated how single‐scan viewsheds can be segmented to characterize ecologically relevant portions of spherical viewsheds and provide a comparison of the 2 methods. The ssTLS approach is an efficient method for collecting fine‐scale information on viewsheds in the field that can produce comprehensive estimates of 3D visibility, advancing the assessment of a key but often overlooked property of wildlife habitat measurement.