Mohd Nazip Suratman - Concepts and Applications of Remote Sensing in Forestry

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Remote sensing has been used for forestry applications for many decades. For example, aerial photographs were used as working tools in preparing forest inventory , size, type and condition maps of forest stands. Today, remote sensing is heavily utilised in forest management , which is acquired from airborne and spaceborne platforms using satellite data. In comparison with traditional aerial photography, satellite imagery has many advantages such as the frequency of data collection, global availability of satellite data, data suitability for digital analysis and classification , and data gathering at relatively low cost.

The new generations of satellite sensors are introduced not only to provide important information on forest ecosystems but also to improve the techniques and accuracies obtained by the traditional approaches. In recent years, there have been rapid advances in the new types of sensors . They have the potential to improve the accuracy in classification of forest types and species discrimination. In addition, the systems were reported to contribute to improving the estimations of forest variables such as forest biomass , stand volume , stand age and carbon stocks by linking the spectral reflectance and ground information via predictive models .

Researchers have become increasingly aware of the potential of remote sensing to address important forestry issues and challenges. The number of forestry publications using remote sensing has grown very rapidly, and this is noticeable with many recent technologies and applications. Therefore, this book chapter highlights the concepts and applications in remote sensing for forestry with a particular emphasis on the techniques, data, sensors and their applications. Novel applications of recent techniques in remote sensing are discussed. In addition, several constraints and future opportunities in the use of remote sensing for forestry applications are addressed.