Light detection and ranging（Lidar） point cloud data contains the information of the 3D coordinate and intensity

which can be applied to acquire the height of crown

fractional cover etc.in high-statue vegetation

such as the forest.Meanwhile

with the improvement of data storage capacity and processing speed

small footprint airborne Lidar is able to store the entire reflected waveform through digitally sampling

which expands the application of Lidar.However

the methods used in forest are not suitable for shrubs

crops and other low canopies.In this paper

we choose the cron as the study object

and propose a crop fractional cover and leaf area index（LAI） retrieval method using airborne Lidar intensity of ground hits and the distance and zenith angle information contained in waveforms data.Relevant fight experiment and ground measurements in Heihe indicate that the method is reliable

and the experiment also validates the great potential for Lidar to be applied to monitor low natural vegetation in agriculture.