Characteristic analysis of high resolution satellite imagery for forest species discrimination

This paper describes the determination method of parameters required for forest species discrimination using high resolution satellite imagery. Forest cover maps, showing the location and the extent of different forest types, are essential tools for forest monitoring and planning. In order to classify mixed forest species with sufficient accuracy, it is important to understand the feature of forest species in pure stand of a small domain. When the specialist of aerial photograph interpretation extracts the forest types, the specialist judges the form of a tree crown, the color tone, and the texture in forest types. Therefore, in this study, analysis of the spectrum signature of forest species and the texture in the forest type was performed. The study was carried out in a mountain area located in the Yamato and Minami district, Gifu Prefecture, in Japan. The Japanese cedar, the hinoki cypress and the mixed broad leaf forest are mostly distributed in the case study area. Moreover, the Japanese red pine, the pine death area, the Japanese larch, the oak, the chestnut and the bamboo are also covering. In this study, the characteristic of the IKONOS pansharpen data about 8 kinds of forest species was analyzed using the forest type maps created in the field survey. As the result, to use of the spectrum analysis and the texture analysis was effective in extraction of the target forest species.