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pyfor - LiDAR Analysis for Forest Resources

Introduction

Pyfor is a project intended to provide an open source Python module for processing and analyzing LiDAR data in the context of forest resources. Although many software tools exist that do this task, such as the US Forest Service published FUSION, none exist in the Python language and in the open source realm. Since Python and a large number of its relevant packages (or modules) are free and open source, development of pyfor will allow for broad access and development of LiDAR analysis tools, and bring LiDAR analytics of forest resources to a larger audience.

Pyfor will be developed using Python 3.5.2, the latest stable Python release for Windows. Although Python 2.7 is often regarded as the most popular and supported Python version, large software packages like ESRI’s ArcMap are moving to Python 3. In support of this shift, pyfor will be developed for Python 3 only.