Improving the Estimation of Above Ground Biomass Using Dual Polarimetric PALSAR and ETM+ Data in the Hyrcanian Mountain Forest (Iran)

Remote Sensing

Sara Attarchi¹ 

[1] Remote Sensing Group, Institute of Geology, TU Bergakademie Freiberg (TUBAF),Bernhard-von-Cotta-Str. 2, D-09599 Freiberg, Germany

关键词: Landsat7/ETM+;    ALOS/PALSAR;    L-band;    above ground biomass (AGB);    DBH;    linear multiple regression;    topographic effects;    Hyrcanian mountainous forest;    Iran;   

DOI  :  10.3390/rs6053693

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

The objective of this study is to develop models based on both optical and L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data for above ground dry biomass (hereafter AGB) estimation in mountain forests. We chose the site of the Loveh forest, a part of the Hyrcanian forest for which previous attempts to estimate AGB have proven difficult. Uncorrected ETM+ data allow a relatively poor AGB estimation, because topography can hinder AGB estimation in mountain terrain. Therefore, we focused on the use of atmospherically and topographically corrected multispectral Landsat ETM+ and Advanced Land-Observing Satellite/Phased Array L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (ALOS/PALSAR) to estimate forest AGB. We then evaluated 11 different multiple linear regression models using different combinations of corrected spectral and PolSAR bands and their derived features. The use of corrected ETM+ spectral bands and GLCM textures improves AGB estimation significantly (adjusted R² = 0.59; RMSE = 31.5 Mg/ha). Adding SAR backscattering coefficients as well as PolSAR features and textures increase substantially the accuracy of AGB estimation (adjusted R² = 0.76; RMSE = 25.04 Mg/ha). Our results confirm that topographically and atmospherically corrected data are indispensable for the estimation of mountain forest’s physical properties. We also demonstrate that only the joint use of PolSAR and multispectral data allows a good estimation of AGB in those regions.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland