Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV)-based canopy height modeling under leaf-on and leaf-off conditions for determining tree height and crown diameter (case study: Hyrcanian mixed forest)

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• Tree height and crown diameter are two common individual tree attributes that can be estimated from unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) images thanks to photogrammetry and structure from motion.

• This research investigates the potential of low-cost UAV aerial images to estimate tree height and crown diameter.

• UAV-based tree height and crown diameter estimates were validated against field measurements and resulted in 3.22 m (10.1%) and 0.81 m (7.02%) root mean square errors, respectively. The results showed high agreement between our estimates and field measurements, with an R2 of 0.808 for tree height and an R2 of 0.923 for crown diameter.