Object based classification of SAR data for the delineation of forest cover maps and the detection of deforestation – A viable procedure and its application in GSE Forest Monitoring

In this chapter forest cover and forest cover change mapping basing on image objects is discussed. Change relates to recent complete harvesting and reestablishment, degradation or thinning is not considered. For the change maps two different strategies are proposed. The first one derives the changes by means of previously classified images of a multitemporal dataset and is thus referred to as “post-classification change detection”. For increasing the accuracy of the change maps a knowledge based change detection approach is introduced. The second strategy considers all scenes of the multitemporal dataset simultaneously. This method is referred to as “multidate classification”.