Deforestation in the Miombo Woodlands: A pixel based automated change detection

Author(s)
Ralf Koller, Cyrus Samimi
Abstract

Most methods of change detection require a considerable amount of effort and expertise. The procedures of change detection are visual-, classification-, object- or vector-based. The target of this research was to develop an automated and generally unsupervised combination of methods to quantify deforestation on a per pixel basis. The study area was the Gutu district in Zimbabwe. In the first step, Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) scenes were spectrally unmixed by the Spectral Mixture Analysis (SMA). The calculation of the necessary endmembers was performed by means of the N-FINDR algorithm. After the unmixing process, the data were analysed with change vector analysis (CVA) utilizing spherical statistics. Thereafter, a combination of constraints, including a Bayesian threshold and spherical angles, was applied to identify deforestation. The combination of these methods provided an accurate idea of the state of deforestation and enabled attribution to ‘fire-induced’ and ‘non fire-induced’ classes.

Organisation(s)
Department of Geography and Regional Research
External organisation(s)
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU)
Journal
International Journal of Remote Sensing
Volume
32
Pages
7631-7649
No. of pages
19
ISSN
0143-1161
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/01431161.2010.527390
Publication date
2011
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
101018 Statistics, 207402 Remote sensing, 105904 Environmental research
Portal url
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/c660ac06-6574-4ec4-9a1d-34e882734b17