J. For. Sci., 2017, 63(8):355-362 | DOI: 10.17221/15/2017-JFS

Forest density and orchard classification in Hyrcanian forests of Iran using Landsat 8 dataOriginal Paper

Khosrow MIRAKHORLOU*, Reza AKHAVAN
Research Institute of Forests and Rangelands, Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization (AREEO), Tehran, Iran

Satellite-based remote sensing is of crucial importance to provide timely and continuous thematic maps for practical forestry tasks. There is currently no existing remote sensing-based, large-scale inventory of canopy cover classes (and also adjacent orchards) on the full range of Hyrcanian forests. We used the freely available and large-scale coverage of Landsat 8 imagery acquired in 2014 to classify three forest density classes as well as non-forest and orchards. The supervised classification and support vector machine classifier were selected based on a pre-classification of three representative pilot regions. Classified final maps were validated by means of a two-stage sampling and 1,852 field samples. The total areas of the dense, semi-dense, sparse forests and orchards were 45, 36, 19 and 1.9% of the total studied area, respectively. The overall accuracy and Kappa coefficient of classified maps were 94.8 and 90%, respectively. The methodology introduced to map forest cover in Hyrcanian forests is concluded to enable providing a high quality forest database for further research, planning and management.

Keywords: canopy cover; Caspian forests; satellite data; supervised classification; support vector machines; two-stage sampling

Published: August 31, 2017  Show citation

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MIRAKHORLOU K, AKHAVAN R. Forest density and orchard classification in Hyrcanian forests of Iran using Landsat 8 data. J. For. Sci. 2017;63(8):355-362. doi: 10.17221/15/2017-JFS.
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