Mapping Burn Scars in Indonesian Tropical Forests Using InSAR Coherence Technique

Abstract

Tropical  forests  are important within the global Earth system as they have several functions that make them valuable ecosystems. InSAR coherence technique  has  been shown to offer useful information for forestry applications, especially in cases of forest monitoring  and burn scar detection. Four ERS-1/2 tandem image pairs have been used in the study area in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. These images have been analyzed in order to generate InSAR coherence maps for detecting burn scars. The resulting maps have been compared with burn scars of the same area that have been  obtained by optical remote sensing images. Coherence was found to be a good tool for rapid assessment for burnt areas. The coherence of burnt forest area was increased by 0.2 during 1997 fire ; whilst the minimum coherence was found to be more  than 0.35. InSAR coherence technique results proved to be fast and accurate enough to estimate the extent of the burnt areas on a provincial scale. It provides valuable information about their locations for reducing the risk of future fires in the study area.