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Countrywide mapping of trees outside forests based on remote sensing data in Switzerland
- Source :
- International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation. 100:102336
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- Elsevier BV, 2021.
-
Abstract
- Although trees growing outside forests are less perceived in relation to those inside forests, they are also valuable and serve various functions. The biophysical thresholds of Trees Outside Forests (TOF) were recently defined and standardised by the Global Forest Resources Assessments of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (UNFAO-FRA). With these definitions, standardised mapping of TOF resources became feasible at the national and international level. Here, we aimed to fill the spatial information gap of TOF resources at the national scale with an automated mapping approach based on the UNFAO-FRA definition. The approach was carried out in ArcGIS using adapted UNFAO-FRA biophysical thresholds with routinely acquired countrywide remote sensing data for the whole of Switzerland: a Vegetation Height Model (VHM), a Topographic Landscape Model (TLM Regio) land cover map, and a Forest Mask. Results were validated using stereo-image interpretation data of the Swiss National Forest Inventory (NFI), which verified 95%, 55% and 75% of overall, producer’s and user’s accuracy, respectively. Of the five forest production regions in Switzerland, the highest accuracy was achieved in the Central Plateau and the lowest in the Alps, with accuracy generally decreasing with increasing elevation. Omission and commission errors were highly correlated with the vertical and horizontal accuracy of the VHM, and the applied biophysical thresholds caused both types of error. The final TOF map produced with our approach is at the countrywide scale, is superior to existing TOF information, meets UNFAO-FRA management and reporting needs, and enables the derivation of TOF’s biomass, carbon sequestration potential and species distribution for the whole country.
- Subjects :
- Global and Planetary Change
Biomass (ecology)
Species distribution
Elevation
Land cover
Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
Carbon sequestration
Remote sensing (archaeology)
Environmental science
Computers in Earth Sciences
Scale (map)
Spatial analysis
Earth-Surface Processes
Remote sensing
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 15698432
- Volume :
- 100
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........770944ccde613580d1b888f58ba22b3b