Discriminating Between Canopies of Natural Forest and Acacia Plantation Plots in a Google Earth Image to Evaluate Forest Land Rehabilitation by Acacia Species

A Google Earth image was used to examine if canopies of Acacia plantation plots for land rehabilitation and natural evergreen forest can be discriminated through the multivariate color profiling of the canopies in the image. Among canopies of 19-or 20-years-old Acacia plantation plots and the natural evergreen forest of Sakaerat, Thailand, 83% of the Acacia canopies and 80% of the evergreen forest canopies were correctly classified by discriminant analysis, indicating incomplete restoration of the ecosystem after the rehabilitation period. The rehabilitative effects were recognized as demonstrating no significant differences between the Acacia and the evergreen forest canopies for some single color variables. The discriminatory power was nearly comparable to that of established remote-sensing technologies and to the abiotic discrimination of forest soils. The use of Google Earth images in land rehabilitation as well as the relevance of Acacia plantation for the rehabilitation of degraded lands in the region is discussed. © 2010 Friends Science Publishers