Estimation of Aboveground Forest Biomass Carbon Stock by Satellite Remote Sensing

Recently, the demands of accurate forest carbon stock estimation and mapping are increasing in Korea. This study investigates the feasibility of two methods, k-Nearest Neighbor (kNN) and Regression Tree Analysis (RTA), for carbon stock estimation of pilot areas, Gongju and Sejong cities. The 3rd and 5th similar to 6th NFI data were collected together with Landsat TM acquired in 1992, 2010 and Aster in 2009. Additionally, various vegetation indices and tasseled cap transformation were created for better estimation. Comparison between two methods was conducted by evaluating carbon statistics and visualizing carbon distributions on the map. The comparisons indicated clear strengths and weaknesses of two methods: kNN method has produced more consistent estimates regardless of types of satellite images, but its carbon maps were somewhat smooth to represent the dense carbon areas, particularly for Aster 2009 case. Meanwhile, RTA method has produced better performance on mean bias results and representation of dense carbon areas, but they were more subject to types of satellite images, representing high variability in spatial patterns of carbon maps. Finally, in order to identify the increases in carbon stock of study area, we created the difference maps by subtracting the 1992 carbon map from the 2009 and 2010 carbon maps. Consequently, it was found that the total carbon stock in Gongju and Sejong cities was drastically increased during that period.