This study presents an individual tree-crown-based approach for canopy fuel load estimation and mapping in two Mediterranean pine stands. Based on destructive sampling, an allometric equation was developed for the estimation of crown fuel weight considering only pine crown width, a tree characteristic that can be estimated from passive imagery. Two high resolution images were used originally for discriminating Aleppo and Calabrian pines crown regions through a geographic object based image analysis approach. Subsequently, the crown region images were segmented using a watershed segmentation algorithm and crown width was extracted. The overall accuracy of the tree crown isolation expressed through a perfect match between the reference and the delineated crowns was 34.00% for the Kassandra site and 48.11% for the Thessaloniki site, while the coefficient of determination between the ground measured and the satellite extracted crown width was 0.5. Canopy fuel load values estimated in the current study presented mean values from 1.29 ± 0.6 to 1.65 ± 0.7 kg/m 2 similar to other conifers worldwide. Despite the modest accuracies attained in this first study of individual tree crown fuel load mapping, the OPEN ACCESSRemote Sens. 2013, 5 6462 combination of the allometric equations with satellite-based extracted crown width information, can contribute to the spatially explicit mapping of canopy fuel load in Mediterranean areas. These maps can be used among others in fire behavior prediction, in fuel reduction treatments prioritization and during active fire suppression.

ABSTRACT:Remote sensing facilitates the extraction of information for earth's surface through its capability of acquiring images covering large areas and the availability of commercial software for their processing. The aim of this study is the feature extraction from three Geoeye-1 stereo pairs for forested area. The study area is located in central mountainous forested peninsula of Chalkidiki, in northern Greece. Dominant forest tree species of the site are oak (Quercus conferta), beech (Fagus moesiaca), black pine (Pinus nigra) and calabrian pine (Pinus brutia). Very High Resolution (VHR) Geoeye-1 stereo pair satellite images were utilized in panchromatic and multispectral mode. The panchromatic mode was employed for Digital Surface Model (DSM) generation and its evaluation. In this study the High Pass Filter (HPF) data fusion technique was applied between panchromatic and multispectral mode for acquiring a new image with the benefits of both contracting images. Because of the fact that the feature extraction was attempted in a forested region, NDVI index and Tasseled Cap transformation were applied in the fused images' evaluation procedure. Optical assessment was also applied. The accuracy of the generated DSM and the evaluation results of the fused images were remarkable.

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ABSTRACT:Spatial explicit knowledge regarding the quantity and the spatial distribution of forest parameters is crucial for sustainable forest management, as well as in fulfilling national reporting needs in the framework of international treaties (i.e. Kyoto Protocol, FAO, EFFIS etc). Especially, tree number which can be used for assessing forest tree density (tree number/ha), is among the most important and laboursome parameters to be measured in the field. The aim of this study is to estimate tree number based on the use of nationwide, freely available, very high spatial resolution orthophotos acquired from Greek National Cadastre and Mapping Agency during the 2007-2009 period. The study area is the University Forest of Taxiarchis, which is located in central Halkidiki, Northern Greece. The dominant species of the forest includes both broadleaves (oak, beech) and coniferous species (Black pine, Calabrian pine), which are found in both pure and mixed stands. Tree crown detection was tested on natural color orthophoto bands in several plots. The principal components and intensity-hue-saturation transformations were also applied in order to enhance tree detection accuracy. Local maxima technique was utilized for tree crown detection. Accuracy results were evaluated based on field plot data available from the official forest management plan of the area completed in 2011. Overall, the detection accuracy exceeded 50% which is deemed satisfactory considering also the heterogeneity of the Mediterranean landscape and the limited spectral resolution of the remote sensing data available.