Tree architecture influences physical and ecological processes within the tree. Prior work suggested the existence of general principles which govern these processes. Among these, the West, Brown and Enquist (WBE) theory is prominent; it holds that biological function has its origin in a tree's idealized branching system network; from which scaling exponents can be estimated. The scaling exponents of the WBE theory (branch radius scaling ratio, “a” and branch length scaling ratio “b”) can be derived from branch parameters and from these, metabolic scaling rate “ö” can be derived. Until now, branch parameter values are taken from direct measurements; either from standing trees or from harvested trees. Such measurements are time consuming, labour intensive and susceptible to subjective errors. Terrestrial LiDAR (TLS) is a promising alternative, being both less biased to error, scalable, and being able to collect large quantities of data without the need of destructive sampling the trees. …