TITLE:
Determining the Drying Out of Coniferous Trees Using Airborne and Satellite Data
AUTHORS:
Sviatlana I. Guliaeva, Ilya I. Bruchkousky, Leonid V. Katkovsky
KEYWORDS:
Remote Sensing, Forest Monitoring, Stem Pest, Spruce Dieback, Spectral Clas-sification, Vegetation Indices, Belarus
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Remote Sensing,
Vol.10 No.2,
June
3,
2021
ABSTRACT: In recent
decades, the problem of drying out of conifers has become a subject of
significant importance due to the widespread mortality of trees caused by stem
pest’s damage. Early detection of areas affected by insect outbreaks is of
great relevance for preventing the further spread of pests. Forests of Belarus
are largely affected by conifers dieback caused by the bark beetle. The aim of
the study was to identify drying out conifers using a TripleSat satellite
multispectral image of a woodland area in Belarus based on preliminary airborne
measurements. Spectrometers operating in a spectral range of 400 - 900 nm were used in airborne measurements, resulting
in distinguishing various drying out stages with an accuracy of 27% - 74% for aerial data. In
this study, a supervised classification of the TripleSat image based on the
method of linear discriminant analysis (LDA) was performed. The input data for
LDA algorithm is a set of remote sensing vegetation indices. Results of the
study demonstrate that about 90% of the test site is at the green-attack stage
that is confirmed by ground surveys of this area.