Annual forest and evergreen forest cover maps in the Brazilian Amazon in terms of FAO's forest definition

Abstract

Abstract. Many forest cover maps have been generated by using optical and/or microwave images and various forest definitions, but these forest cover maps have large discrepancies. Both forest definition and validation data used for accuracy assessment of forest cover maps are often considered as two of the major factors for the discrepancy among these forest cover maps. To date, few studies have assessed forest cover maps in terms of two biophysical parameters used in forest definition: (1) tree canopy height and (2) canopy coverage. We generated annual forest cover maps from 2007 to 2010 and evergreen forest cover maps from 2000 to 2021 in the Brazilian Amazon using the images from the Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, and the forest definition of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (>5-m tree height and >10 % canopy coverage). The canopy height and coverage datasets from the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System during 2003–2007 were used to assess annual forest cover maps from 2007 to 2010 and evergreen forest cover maps from 2003 to 2007, and the results show high accuracy of these forest and evergreen forest cover maps in the Brazilian Amazon.

Annual maps of forest cover in the Brazilian Amazon from analyses of PALSAR and MODIS images

“…The annual forest and evergreen forest maps codes are available at the figshare (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21445626; Qin and Xiao, 2022a). The annual forest maps (2007)(2008)(2009)(2010) and evergreen forest maps in the Brazilian Amazon have been submitted to the figshare data repository (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21445590; Qin and Xiao, 2022b) in a GeoTIFF format. The data are provided in the spatial reference of South_America_Albers_Equal_Area_Conic.…”