Forest and deforestation identification based on multitemporal polarimetric RADARSAT-2 images in Southwestern China

Fengli Zhang; Chou Xie; Kun Li; Maosong Xu; Xuejun Wang; Zhongsheng Xia

doi:10.1117/1.JRS.6.063527

27 April 2012 Forest and deforestation identification based on multitemporal polarimetric RADARSAT-2 images in Southwestern China

Fengli Zhang, Chou Xie, Kun Li, Maosong Xu, Xuejun Wang, Zhongsheng Xia

Author Affiliations +

Journal of Applied Remote Sensing, Vol. 6, Issue 1, 063527 (April 2012). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JRS.6.063527

Abstract

In the southwest of China, it is anticipated that synthetic aperture radar (SAR) will become an important tool for forest inventory because of its all-weather capabilities. The Zhazuo area in Guizhou Province of southwest China, with a typical Karst landform, was selected as the test site. Six RADARSAT-2 polarimetric images were acquired in order to analyze polarimetric backscattering behavior and temporal variation of forest and deforested area. Polarimetric decomposition was conducted, and Pauli and Freeman-Durden decomposition were demonstrated to be more suitable for identifying forest and deforestation respectively. Finally, a scheme for multitemporal polarimetric SAR data fusion was proposed, which could greatly improve image quality and make forest identification more efficient. Support vector machine classification showed that the overall accuracy for forest identification was 87.63%, and the accuracy could be enhanced to 91.49% after gamma filtering.

Citation Download Citation

Fengli Zhang, Chou Xie, Kun Li, Maosong Xu, Xuejun Wang, and Zhongsheng Xia "Forest and deforestation identification based on multitemporal polarimetric RADARSAT-2 images in Southwestern China," Journal of Applied Remote Sensing 6(1), 063527 (27 April 2012). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JRS.6.063527

Published: 27 April 2012

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