Title: Monitoring temporal trajectories and trend of foliage projective cover (FPC) in forest

communities using Landsat image time series in Queensland

Authors: Santosh Bhandari, Stuart Phinn, Tony Gill

Abstract:

Incremental, cyclic and periodic changes in vegetation structure and condition are complex and
continuous phenomena affected by multiple factors. Information on the type and amount of
vegetation change at different temporal and spatial scales is critical for understanding vegetation
dynamics and developing sustainable use and management guidelines. Remote sensing change
detection methods are one of the only viable and spatially explicit options for monitoring the
changes in a large spatial extent repetitively. Bi-temporal change detection methods, however, do
not account the effect of phenological change, inter-annual climatic variability and other changes of
cyclic nature. Therefore, the change classes produced by those methods may not truly characterize
the trend in vegetation structure and condition occurred with in that period. A dense time series of
satellite images capable of accounting seasonal variation only can produce the trend along with the
temporal trajectories of the vegetation communities. A Landsat image time series (LITS) with the
observations every 16 days for five years from July 2003 was used to derive the foliage projective
cover of forest communities in Barakula state forests in Queensland. The FPC time series produced
was used to characterize temporal trajectories of different forest communities and to derive the FPC
trend. The area was classified as either no change or positive change and negative change based on
the trend of FPC over the period. The results showed that temporal trajectories and long term trend
of vegetation change can be monitor using this approach.