Integrating orthorectified RADARSAT data and GIS data for forest management

摘要

Forest updating is the detection and recording of recent manmade or natural changes. The most common, currently accepted approach for forest updating is airphoto interpretation and subsequent update using a GIS. This approach is well understood and accepted by the forestry community. Benefits include wide spread operational use of photography for additional forestry tasks, while limitations include cost, update ability, and weather dependence. This paper reviews how RADARSAT data can monitor forestry activity in several operational test sites in Canada and Ecuador. The methodology of processing, integrating and analyzing multi-data sources, such as satellite data, GIS data, GPS, aerial photography, can produce acceptable results for forestry management. Results show that the boundaries of high contrast forest clearcuts in RADARSAT Finer mode data had a total root-men-squared (RMS) error of 12.5 meters compared to differentially corrected GPS data.