BASAL AREA ESTIMATION ON INTENSIVELY MANAGED LOBLOLLY PINE STANDS USING 30-METER SATELLITE DATA

H. WHIFFEN,  C. CIESZEWSKI, B. BORDERS,  R. LOWE, B. IZLAR,  M. ZUPKO, AND W. COOKE 

Abstract:

As the forest products industry receives more competition from imports and products substitution, foresters and other natural resource managers are realizing the need for accurate, localized, timely estimates of forest land acreage. Spatial data, such as that from Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (LTM), have been used in many parts of the world for forest inventory and analysis . In an effort to study the usefulness of LTM data for timber inventory in the southeast United States, we designed a method to sample timber on a relatively tight grid (30 meters x 30 meters). Professional foresters collected timber cruising data from four by four blocks of 16 plots. Plot basal area was calculated from these field data. We used LTM data from both leaf-on and leaf-off time periods to predict the variation in basal area over the study area. In the study described here we found that the spatial resolution of the LTM's sensors was not adequate to accurately distinguish variations in basal area data at the 30-m plot scale. However, at the 60-meter resolution the LTM regression estimator predicted the average basal area in mature, intensively managed loblolly pine plantations with an adjusted r2 value of 0.92. The regression estimator based on data from a 3 x 3 chain (60 meter) cruise predicted the average basal area in the same stands with an adjusted r2 value of 0.75.

Author Keywords:
forest inventory, Landsat, basal area.

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Addresses:

H. WHIFFEN, C. CIESZEWSKI, B. BORDERS, R. LOWE, D. B. Warnell School of Forest Resources,  University of Georgia   Athens, GA 30602

B. IZLAR, Center for Forest Business, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602

M. ZUPKO, Georgia Forestry Association, 500 Pinnacle Court, Suite 505, Norcross, GA 30071

W. COOKE,  USDA Forest Service, Southern Forest Experiment Station, Forest Inventory and Analysis, 201 Lincoln Green, Starkville, MS 39759

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