Mapping forest disturbance due to selective logging in the congo basin with radarsat-2 time series
Year of publication
2021
Authors
Antropov, Oleg; Rauste, Yrjö; Praks, Jaan; Seifert, Frank Martin; Häme, Tuomas
Abstract
Dense time series of stripmap RADARSAT-2 data acquired in the Multilook Fine mode were used for detecting and mapping the extent of selective logging operations in the tropical forest area in the northern part of the Republic of the Congo. Due to limited radiometric sensitivity to forest biomass variation at C-band, basic multitemporal change detection approach was supplemented by spatial texture analysis to separate disturbed forest from intact. The developed technique primarily uses multi-temporal aggregation of orthorectified synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery that are acquired before and after the logging operations. The actual change analysis is based on textural features of the log-ratio image calculated using two SAR temporal composites compiled of SAR scenes acquired before and after the logging operations. Multitemporal aggregation and filtering of SAR scenes decreased speckle and made the extracted textural features more prominent. The overall detection accuracy was around 80%, with some underestimation of the area of forest disturbance compared to reference based on optical data. The user’s accuracy for disturbed forest varied from 76.7% to 94.9% depending on the accuracy assessment approach. We conclude that change detection utilizing RADARSAT-2 time series represents a useful instrument to locate areas of selective logging in tropical forests.
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Publication type
Publication format
Article
Parent publication type
Journal
Article type
Original article
Audience
ScientificPeer-reviewed
Peer-ReviewedMINEDU's publication type classification code
A1 Journal article (refereed), original researchPublication channel information
Journal
Volume
13
Issue
4
Article number
740
Pages
1-16
ISSN
Publication forum
Publication forum level
1
Open access
Open access in the publisher’s service
Yes
Open access of publication channel
Fully open publication channel
License of the publisher’s version
CC BY
Self-archived
Yes
Other information
Fields of science
Physical sciences; Geosciences
Keywords
[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object]
Internationality of the publisher
International
Language
English
International co-publication
Yes
Co-publication with a company
No
DOI
10.3390/rs13040740
The publication is included in the Ministry of Education and Culture’s Publication data collection
Yes