Remote sensing of the forest transition and its ecosystem impacts in mountain environments (FoMo)
Investigator(s)
Principal investigator:
Eric Lambin, Departement of Geography, University of Louvain, Belgium
E-mail: eric.lambin(at)uclouvain.be
Abstract
Land abandonment and forest recovery is often taking place on marginal lands, such as mountain environments. Assessing the rate, spatial patterns and ecosystem impacts of forest cover change in these environments is challenging given the ruggedness and inaccessibility of mountains. Remote sensing methods are the privileged tool, and yet suffer from methodological challenges due to topographical and shadowing effects. This project will specifically address methodological research questions, and will develop an optimal preprocessing chain to be used for semi-automatic analyses of high resolution satellite data on mountainous terrain. The project aims at a better understanding of the impact of preprocessing techniques on the detection accuracy of forest transitions and the mapping accuracy of ecosystem services. The methods will be developed and evaluated in three mountain areas in contrasting geographic contexts, to allow for a rich comparative analysis: the Carpathian mountains in Eastern Europe; the Northern Andes in Ecuador and Bhutan, in the Himalayas.
URL
None
