Publications

Zhang, XM; Long, TF; He, GJ; Guo, YT; Yin, RY; Zhang, ZM; Xiao, H; Li, MX; Cheng, B (2020). Rapid generation of global forest cover map using Landsat based on the forest ecological zones. JOURNAL OF APPLIED REMOTE SENSING, 14(2), 22211.

Abstract
The easy and ready access to Landsat datasets and the ever-lowering costs of computing make it feasible to monitor the Earth's land cover at Landsat resolutions of 30 m. However, producing forest-cover products rapidly and on a large scale, such as intercontinental or global, is still a challenging task. By utilizing the huge catalog of satellite imagery as well as the high-performance computing capacity of Google Earth Engine, we proposed an automated pipeline for generating 30-m resolution global-scale forest map from time-series of Landsat images. We describe the methods to create products of forest cover at a global scale. First, we partitioned the landscapes into subregions of similar forest type and spatial continuity. Then, a multisource forest/nonforest sample set was established for machine algorithm learning training. Finally, a random forest classifier algorithm was used to obtain samples automatically, extract the characteristics of satellite images, and establish the forest/nonforest classifier models. Taking Landsat8 images in 2018 as a case, a novel 30-m resolution global forest cover (GFC30) map has been produced. The result shows that by the end of 2018, the total forest area in the world was 3.71 x 10(9) ha. The accuracy evaluation of GFC30 for 2018 was carried out using verification points via stratified random sampling of a MODIS land cover map (MCD12C1 product in 2012) and verified on high-resolution satellite imagery (e.g., Google Earth). According to the validation result, the overall accuracy of GFC30 for 2018 is 90.94%. (C) The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.

DOI:
10.1117/1.JRS.14.022211

ISSN:
1931-3195