Deforestation Detection and Early Warning using L-band SAR

Abstract:
Deforestation detection and forest early warning is a hot topic in SAR Earth observation today. Nearing 10 years in orbit, ALOS-2 long-term pantropical forest monitoring has allowed development of powerful next-generation deforestation detection algorithms. In this paper, we discuss the development of JAXA’s new deforestation detection algorithm to be employed in JJ-FAST Ver. 4.1. Strict validation of the system performance confirms that ALOS-2 dual-pol ScanSAR observation can achieve producer’s accuracies better than 40%, with false alarm rates lower than 30%, in a fully automatic, operational forest early warning system.