MODIS-Based Monitoring of Forest and Carbon Dynamics in Liaoning Province during Past Five Years

摘要

With the strengthening of ecological protection at present, more focuses have been drawn on the role of forest playing in ecological development, climate change, and carbon cycle at regional and global levels. The latest global report on forest resources from FAO (FRA 2005) shows that global forest is further degraded, however, China gains a positive increase in the gross of forest resources including forest area and growing stock. It is necessary to establish an effective way to inquire information on forest conditions in China yearly that can open out dynamics of forest and carbon storage, and the progress of sustainable forest management in recent years. In this paper, a forest index (FI), defined as an integration value of NDVI that exceeds the setting reference value within the observed NDVI values for the vitality period of forest, is introduced, and applied to extract forest and forest change at regional and national levels based on time series remote sensing data. Whereafter, total annual NPP is estimated based on the mean value of NPP per hectare from the existing research, and estimate of forest carbon storage and dynamics in quantity between 2001 and 2005 is then performed. Under the support of 32-day composite MODIS NDVI data at 500m spatial resolution during past five years and recent national forest inventory (NFI) results, forest in Liaoning province that is one of the main forest distribution area in China is taken as an example to extract forest cover and carbon storage dynamics with above approach. The results show that it provides an effective method to monitor forest dynamism.