Comparison of Forest Carbon Stocks Estimation Methods Using Forest Type Map and Landsat TM Satellite Imagery

The conventional National Forest Inventory(NFI)-based forest carbon stock estimation method is suitable for national-scale estimation, but is not for regional-scale estimation due to the lack of NFI plots. In this study, for the purpose of regional-scale carbon stock estimation, we created grid-based forest carbon stock maps using spatial ancillary data and two types of up-scaling methods. Chungnam province was chosen to represent the study area and for which the 5thNFI (2006 similar to 2009) data was collected. The first method (method 1) selects forest type map as ancillary data and uses regression model for forest carbon stock estimation, whereas the second method (method 2) uses satellite imagery and k-Nearest Neighbor(k-NN) algorithm. Additionally, in order to consider uncertainty effects, the final AGB carbon stock maps were generated by performing 200 iterative processes with Monte Carlo simulation. As a result, compared to the NFI-based estimation(21,136,911 tonC), the total carbon stock was over-estimated by method 1(22,948,151 tonC), but was under-estimated by method 2(19,750,315 tonC). In the paired Ttest with 186 independent data, the average carbon stock estimation by the NFI-based method was statistically different from method2(p< 0.01), but was not different from method1(p> 0.01). In particular, by means of Monte Carlo simulation, it was found that the smoothing effect of k-NN algorithm and misregistration error between NFI plots and satellite image can lead to large uncertainty in carbon stock estimation. Although method 1 was found suitable for carbon stock estimation of forest stands that feature heterogeneous trees in Korea, satellite-based method is still in demand to provide periodic estimates of un-investigated, large forest area. In these respects, future work will focus on spatial and temporal extent of study area and robust carbon stock estimation with various satellite images and estimation methods.