title: Detecting and Quantifying Forest Change: The Potential of Existing C- and X-Band Radar Datasets.
abstract: This paper evaluates the opportunity provided by global interferometric radar datasets for monitoring deforestation, degradation and forest regrowth in tropical and semi-arid environments. The paper describes an easy to implement method for detecting forest spatial changes and estimating their magnitude. The datasets were acquired within space-borne high spatial resolutions radar missions at near-global scales thus being significant for monitoring systems developed under the United Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The approach presented in this paper was tested in two areas located in Indonesia and Australia. Forest change estimation was based on differences between a reference dataset acquired in February 2000 by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) and TanDEM-X mission (TDM) datasets acquired in 2011 and 2013. The synergy between SRTM and TDM datasets allowed not only identifying changes in forest extent but also estimating their magnitude with respect to the reference through variations in forest height.
authors.affiliation: Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.
authors.forename: Mihai A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Tanase
authors.affiliation: Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia; Faculty of Forestry, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
authors.forename: Ismail
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Ismail
authors.affiliation: Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.
authors.forename: Kim
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Lowell
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Forestry, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
authors.forename: Oka
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Karyanto
authors.affiliation: Gamma Remote Sensing AG, CH-3073 Gümligen, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Maurizio
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Santoro
mesh_terms: D001315:Australia; D057231:Climate Change; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D001330:Electronic Data Processing / Q000379:methods; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D065928:Forests; D040362:Geographic Information Systems / Q000295:instrumentation; D006801:Humans; D007214:Indonesia; D011825:Radar / Q000295:instrumentation; D058998:Remote Sensing Technology / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*