Assessment of Forest Damage in Croatia using Landsat-8 OLI Images

• DOI: 10.15177/seefor.15-14
• Publication Date: 2015-05-07T13:19:23Z
• Authors: Anita Šimić Milas; Prabha Rupasinghe; Ivan Balenović; Pece Grosevski
• Keywords: Natural hazard

Background and Purpose: Rapid assessments of forest damage caused by natural disasters such as ice-break, wind, flooding, hurricane, or fires are necessary for mitigation management.Forest directly impacts carbon uptake biogeochemical cycles, thus, has an impact on climate change.It intensifies erosion influences socio-economic well-being population.Quantification cover change represents a challenge the scientific community damaged areas often in mountainous remote regions.Forested area western Croatia was considerably ice-breaking flooding 2014.Satellite sensing technology opened up new possibilities detecting quantifying damage.Several tools available rapid assessment damage.These include aerial photographic interpretation, airborne satellite imagery.This study evaluates capability Landsat-8 optical data vegetation index mapping that occurred during winter 2014. Materials Methods:The detection analysis this based Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) difference approach, where pre-and post-event images were employed ENVI image workflow.The validation done comparing satellite-generated map with ground truth field observations spatial management units plans.Results: The overall from suggests total covers 45,265.32ha forest.It is 19.20% less than estimated Vuletić et al. [3] who found 56,021.86ha affected.Most observed mixed, broadleaf coniferous forest.The errors commission omission calculated to be 35.73%and 31.60%,respectively.Conclusions: bands reliable when changes NDVI approach.The advantage its availability acquire detect