Tracking of rainforest deforestation

rainforest

Tropical rainforests play an important role in the entire Earth system. But these areas are also the least developed areas of the economy, so deforestation activities are very frequent.

Scientists and technology companies in various countries are designing rainforest mapping schemes, but the results are not satisfactory.

The main problem with this work is that the cloud coverage in the rainforest area is large and it is difficult to get clean and cloudless images, so optical sensors are not easy to use.

Taking the Cameroon Rainforest as an example

This is a thumbnail list of images acquired in this area of the Sentinel2 optical satellite. As shown in the figure, the cloud coverage is very high and almost no clear image can be found.

The influence of the cloud can be overcome by the radar data of Sentinel 1. However, the radar image itself has a relatively large noise and is difficult to discriminate.

But through our unique algorithms, we can produce high-quality radar data products to accurately describe the dynamic changes of forest land.

The Chinese Remote Sensing Satellite Ground Station of the Chinese Academy of Sciences produced SAR seasonal products in Cameroon. This product can reflect the fluctuation of forest land in the region in recent years, indicating that the local forestry activities are very active.

Quarterly Timing Products of Rainforest Deforestation

In the example shown above, the forest is cut down as a whole in patches.

Quarterly Timing Products of Rainforest Deforestation

In the example shown above, the woods are selectively partially cut down.

The color part of the image here represents a large change between two adjacent phases, which is usually called deforestation in forest areas.

From this, we can see that through our products, we can conduct a comprehensive forest change (deforestation) survey in the vast cloud-filled rainforest areas of West Africa. We can produce seasonal or bimonthly change maps in time to provide law enforcement basis for government forest management.