FROM HIGH RESOLUTION OPTICAL SATELLITE DATA TO ABOVE-GROUND BIOMASS ESTIMATES IN TROPICAL RAINFORESTS - A LANDSCAPE LEVEL CASE STUDY IN A PRODUCTION FOREST IN DERAMAKOT, SABAH, MALAYSIAN BORNEO

Andreas Langner 1) and Kanehiro Kitayama 1)

1) Laboratory of Forest Ecology, Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University, Kitashirakawa Oiwake-cho, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, 606-8502 Japan

ABSTRACT

Elevated deforestation rates in the tropics affect the global climate as annual emissions from deforestation and land use changes account for more than 17% of the total human induced GHG emissions. High resolution optical satellite data such as ALOS AVNIR-2 and Landsat 7 ETM+ of a production forest in Sabah, Borneo have been analyzed in order to estimate the above ground biomass. As tropical forests are carbon-dense and structurally complex ecosystems remote sensing signals tend to saturate quickly. Crown cover density is regarded as the most important detail of information high resolution optical images can provide. Therefore, biomass values were estimated by measuring the level of forest degradation, which is represented by disturbances in the crown cover. For that sake the algorithm combines reflectance values that represent the quality of the vegetation (NIR) and the amount of bare soil (red or Mid IR). Using AVNIR-2 data the model achieved an r² of 0.28, which is comparably high.