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Monitoring Forest Regrowth Using a Multi-Platform Time SeriesOver the past 50 years, the forests of western Washington and Oregon have been extensively harvested for timber. This has resulted in a heterogeneous mosaic of remaining mature forests, clear-cuts, new plantations, and second-growth stands that now occur in areas that formerly were dominated by extensive old-growth forests and younger forests resulting from fire disturbance. Traditionally, determination of seral stage and stand condition have been made using aerial photography and spot field observations, a methodology that is not only time- and resource-intensive, but falls short of providing current information on a regional scale. These limitations may be solved, in part, through the use of multispectral images which can cover large areas at spatial resolutions in the order of tens of meters. The use of multiple images comprising a time series potentially can be used to monitor land use (e.g. cutting and replanting), and to observe natural processes such as regeneration, maturation and phenologic change. These processes are more likely to be spectrally observed in a time series composed of images taken during different seasons over a long period of time. Therefore, for many areas, it may be necessary to use a variety of images taken with different imaging systems. A common framework for interpretation is needed that reduces topographic, atmospheric, instrumental, effects as well as differences in lighting geometry between images. The present state of remote-sensing technology in general use does not realize the full potential of the multispectral data in areas of high topographic relief. For example, the primary method for analyzing images of forested landscapes in the Northwest has been with statistical classifiers (e.g. parallelepiped, nearest-neighbor, maximum likelihood, etc.), often applied to uncalibrated multispectral data. Although this approach has produced useful information from individual images in some areas, landcover classes defined by these techniques typically are not consistent for the same scene imaged under different illumination conditions, especially in the mountainous regions. In addition, it is difficult to correct for atmospheric and instrumental differences between multiple scenes in a time series. In this paper, we present an approach for monitoring forest cutting/regrowth in a semi-mountainous portion of the southern Gifford Pinchot National Forest using a multisensor-time series composed of MSS, TM, and AVIRIS images.
Document ID
19980201651
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Sabol, Donald E., Jr.
(Washington Univ. Seattle, WA United States)
Smith, Milton O.
(Washington Univ. Seattle, WA United States)
Adams, John B.
(Washington Univ. Seattle, WA United States)
Gillespie, Alan R.
(Washington Univ. Seattle, WA United States)
Tucker, Compton J.
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD United States)
Date Acquired
August 18, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 1996
Publication Information
Publication: Summaries of the Sixth Annual JPL Airborne Earth Science Workshop
Volume: 1
Subject Category
Earth Resources And Remote Sensing
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.
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