Regional mapping of forest growing stock volume with multitemporal ALOS PALSAR backscatter

Abstract

The paper presents advances in regional mapping of forest growing stock volume (GSV, unit: m3/ha) using multitemporal ALOS PALSAR images. For this, an approach based on the Water Cloud Model has been used. Fine Beam Dual (FBD) and Wide Beam (WB) mode backscatter data acquired during 2010 were inverted to GSV; the individual GSV estimates were then combined to form an improved estimate. Examples of regional mapping for the boreal, temperate and tropical zone are here presented. Estimates were obtained at 25 m resolution using FBD data only and at 75 m combining multi-looked FBD estimates and WB estimates. The inclusion of multi-temporal WB data served to improve the spatial characterization of GSV. At pixel level, the discrepancy with respect to other estimates from Earth Observation data was large (relative RMSE ∼ 90%). Aggregation to lower resolution (e.g., 1 km) increased the agreement and a relative RMSE mostly below 30% was obtained.

Keywords

ALOS PALSAR; backscatter; Forest; Growing Stock Volume

Published in

Title: 2014 IEEE International Geoscience & Remote Sensing Symposium : proceedings : July 13-18, 2014. Québec City, Québec, Canada
Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.

Conference

Joint 2014 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, IGARSS 2014 and the 35th Canadian Symposium on Remote Sensing, CSRS 2014

SLU Authors

• Fransson, Johan

  • Department of Forest Resource Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Forest Science

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/IGARSS.2014.6946933
• ISBN: 978-1-4799-5775-0

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/132124