Patent ID: 8352410

Claim:
A method for estimating vegetation growth relative to an object of interest, comprising: identifying a target vegetation from a second sensing dataset by identifying a target vegetation geometry containing data points of the target vegetation; identifying a corresponding target vegetation in a first sensing dataset by employing a corresponding target vegetation geometry containing data points of the corresponding target vegetation, the first sensing dataset collected at a time before the second sensing dataset; attributing a first statistic to the corresponding target vegetation based on a distance of one or more data points within the corresponding target vegetation geometry in the first sensing dataset relative to the object of interest; attributing a second statistic to the target vegetation based on a distance of one or more data points within the target vegetation geometry in the second sensing dataset relative to the object of interest; and determining an encroachment rate at which the target vegetation is growing towards the object of interest from a comparison of the first statistic and the second statistic.