I don't see any reason they couldn't do the same from the air. You can tell foliage with LIDAR, and I'd imagine you could get a pretty good approximation of trunk location pretty easily by looking at the foliage height.
Fair enough, but do they collect their own aerial data? I was under the impression it's all collected through by third parties. Also, do they use anything other than satellite imagery right now? Is LIDAR effective at that range?
Yeah, they have some aerial data. For example: zoom in on downtown San Jose in satellite view. The perspective view is aerial photography, and is copyrighted by Google.
