Mapping and Monitoring of Tree Resources Outside the Forest in Central America

Abstract

This paper presents the remote sensing part of the INCO-DC-project TROF (Tree Resources Outside Forest). The project concentrates on single trees and small groups of trees which do not come under the definition of forest. These tree resources play an important role especially in the tropics, where, e.g., agroforestry systems are fulfilling many ecological functions (e.g. conservation of biodiversity, erosion control, carbon sequestration) and economic functions (e.g. provision of firewood). Currently these tree resources are not included in common forest inventories. Their importance increases with continuing destruction and fragmentation of closed forests. A method for mapping and monitoring tree resources outside forest has been developed by the project consortium of three European partners and three partners from Central America. There are three field sites, one in each of the Central American countries represented in the consortium: Costa Rica, Honduras and Guatemala. The chosen approach is a combination of remote sensing methods and field sampling methods. Various methods of image processing are applied (segmentation, classification, image information fusion). By the use of satellite images of different spatial and spectral resolution, these tree resources can be mapped at different scales.