Due to complexity, vegetation analysis and reconstruction of remote sensing data are challenging problems. Using architectural tree models combined with model inputs estimated from aerial image analysis, this paper presents an analysissynthesis approach for urban vegetation detection, modeling, and reconstruction. Tree species, height, and crown size information are extracted by aerial image analysis. These variables serve for model inversion to retrieve plant age, climatic growth conditions, and competition with neighbors. Functional-structural individual-based tree models are used to reconstruct and visualize virtual trees and their time evolutions realistically in a 3-D viewer rendering the models with geographical coordinates in the reconstructed scene. Our main contributions are: 1) a novel approach for generating plant models in 3-D reconstructed scenes based on the analysis of the geometric properties of the data, and 2) a modeling workflow for the reconstruction and growth simulation of vegetation in urban or natural environments.

International audienceThe objective of this paper is to study forest growth simulation based on functional-structural modelling and its potentials for forestry applications. The GreenLab model is used for this purpose owing to its computational performances, its calibration capacity on real plants and its extension to the stand level, by taking into account the competition between neighbouring plants and the interactions with the environment. We first propose a software design: 1) to manage the composition of forest scenes, 2) to simulate their growth based on parallel computing of individual trees with the GreenLab model, 3) to get the realistic and real-time 3D rendering of the simulation results. We then detail a test case to illustrate the potentialities of this new tool. Mono-specific stands of poplars and pines are simulated. We analyze the computation performances and illustrate the simulation results with 3D outputs. A very classical application in forest management, stand thinning, is also tested. Our tool provides new insights thanks to the detailed architectures of trees resulting from the functional-structural model