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Monitoring, classification, and characterization of interior Alaska forests using AIRSAR and ERS-1 SAR

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 October 2009

C.L. Williams,
K. McDonald,
E. Rignot,
L.A. Viereck,
J.B. Way and
R. Zimmermann
C.L. Williams
Affiliation:
Institute of Northern Forestry, Pacific Northwest Research Station, USDA Forest Service, Fairbanks, AK 99775, USA
K. McDonald
Affiliation:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA
E. Rignot
Affiliation:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA
L.A. Viereck
Affiliation:
Institute of Northern Forestry, Pacific Northwest Research Station, USDA Forest Service, Fairbanks, AK 99775, USA
J.B. Way
Affiliation:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA
R. Zimmermann
Affiliation:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA
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Abstract

At the Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest (BCEF), past ecological research has been directed at forest successional processes on the floodplain of the Tanana River and adjacent uplands. Research at the Bonanza Creek site continues on the mosaic of forests, shrublands, and wetlands in a wide variety of successional stages on the Tanana floodplain. This paper reviews research since 1988 into the capabilities of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) for monitoring, classification, and characterization of these forests using radar remote sensing and modelling techniques. Classifications of successional stages, obtained by use of different classifiers on multi-frequency and multi-polarimetric AIRSAR data, are contrasted; these classifications have been used to predict classification accuracies obtained with ERS-1 data, and to estimate the utility of an ERS-1 and RADARSAT combination for classification. Forest classifications, used in combination with ground-truth data for more than 50 forest stands, are used to summarize the distribution of biomass on the landscape. This will allow projections of future biomass. Monitoring of forest phenology, seasonality of flooding, and freeze–thaw transitions is ongoing. Also, direct monitoring of dominant tree species is demonstrating diurnal variation and interrelationships among environmental, physiological, and backscatter measurements.

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Type
Articles
Information
Polar Record , Volume 31 , Issue 177 , April 1995, pp. 227 - 234
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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