Pre- and post-fire comparison of forest areas in 3D

Abstract

A satellite processing platform for high resolution forest assessment (FORSAT) was developed. It generates the digital surface models (DSMs) of the forest canopy by advanced processing of the very-high resolution (VHR) optical satellite imagery and automatically matches the pre- and post-fire DSMs for 3D change detection. The FORSAT software system can perform the following tasks: pre-processing, point measurement, orientation, quasi-epipolar image generation, image matching, DSM extraction, orthoimage generation, photogrammetric restitution either in mono-plotting mode or in stereo models, 3D surface matching, co-registration, comparison and change detection. It can thoroughly calculate the planimetric and volumetric changes between the epochs. It supports most of the VHR optical imagery commonly used for civil applications. Capabilities of FORSAT have been tested in two real forest fire cases, where the burned areas are located in Cyprus and Austria. The geometric characteristics of burned forest areas have been identified both in 2D plane and 3D volume dimensions, using pre- and post-fire optical image data from different sensors. The test studies showed that FORSAT is an operational software capable of providing spatial (3D) and temporal (4D) information for monitoring of forest fire areas and sustainable forest management. Beyond the wildfires, it can be used for many other forest information needs.