Automated detection of storm damage in forest areas by analyzing TerraSAR-X data

Fast mapping of storm-damaged forest areas is in great demand. In general, airborne platforms are called into action to get a quick impression and to record high-resolution data. However, such storm events come often along with bad weather conditions that limit acquisition of optical data as well as flying by airplane. In this case, the new generation of high-resolution spaceborne SAR sensors (e.g., TerraSAR-X) can be used to acquire rapidly image data. The new generation of high-resolution spaceborne sensors increases the expectation of more promising results. In this paper, we focus first on the border line extraction of forest areas to enable a fast estimation of wind-thrown areas, whereby the pre-event forest border is derived from multi-spectral data. Second, clean-up operations are monitored in the affected forest area by applying a change detection operator.