In the LifeWatch ERIC on-going catalogue of interesting acronyms, LiDAR stands for Light Detection and Ranging. It is an active remote sensing technique that uses light in the form of a pulsed laser to measure ranges to the Earth. The light pulses can penetrate through the canopy of a forest and – combined with other information (e.g. intensity, GPS time) recorded by the LiDAR system carried by aircrafts or drones - generate very precise 3D information about the characteristics of Earth's surface.  In this Series three, Episode six podcast in our 'A Window on Science' interviews, Yifang Shi, Scientific Developer for Ecological Applications of LiDAR Remote Sensing from the Virtual Laboratory and Innovations Centre in Amsterdam, explains how the LifeWatch ERIC virtual research environment makes this information accessible and useful for any type of end user. Because the VRE is capable of handling enormous amounts of data, it transforms the complex 3D point cloud to 2D raster layers, which are maps that contain detailed information of ecosystem structure. This information about the ecosystem structure helps researchers derive information to describe vegetation height, vegetation cover and vegetation structural complexity, which can be very useful for biodiversity monitoring, sustainable forest management, carbon accounting, and climate change modelling. It is valuable information for a range of ecological applications.