Development of a new forest monitoring method using forest structural changes reconstructed from multi-temporal aerial photographs.

2024 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 21K05670
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Review Section: Basic Section 40010:Forest science-related
• Research Institution: Kyushu University
• Principal Investigator: Ota Tetsuji 九州大学, 農学研究院, 准教授 (10753717)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 溝上 展也 九州大学, 農学研究院, 教授 (00274522)
• Project Period (FY): 2021-04-01 – 2025-03-31
• Keywords: 空中写真 / 森林管理 / 時系列データ

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Monitoring silvicultural activities such as logging is extremely important for forest management. This study investigated whether changes in forests can be detected from aerial photographs taken at different times. Specifically, we reconstructed the three-dimensional structure of forests from aerial photographs taken from the 1960s to the 2010s and tested whether small-scale clearcuts could be detected from changes in the three-dimensional structure. The results showed that if the number of years since logging (i.e. the age of the forest) was known, the three-dimensional structure at that time could be estimated. On the other hand, the overall accuracy of detecting logging activity from the three-dimensional structure was 68%.

Free Research Field

森林計画学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

森林の伐採などのモニタリングは森林管理を行う上で極めて重要である。本研究は安価で実用性のある森林のモニタリングシステムの構築を目指し行った。これまで，1期からせいぜい数時期の空中写真を用いた森林モニタリングの研究はあるものの，本研究では10期を超える多時期データから森林の変化の検出を試みた。その結果，既往の衛星データによるモニタリングでは検出できないほどの小さい森林変化も検出できた。本研究はより精緻な森林モニタリング技術の開発につながる可能性がある。