Using and comparing two nonparametric methods (CART and RF) and SPOT-HRG satellite data to predictive tree diversity distribution

Abstract

Abstract. Kalbi S, Fallah A, Hojjati SM. 2014. Using and comparing two nonparametric methods (CART and RF) and SPOT-HRG satellite data to predictive tree diversity distribution. Nusantara Bioscience 6: 57-62. The prediction of spatial distributions of tree species by means of survey data has recently been used for conservation planning. Numerous methods have been developed for building species habitat suitability models. The present study was carried out to find the possible proper relationships between tree species diversity indices and SPOT-HRG reflectance values in Hyrcanian forests, North of Iran. Two different modeling techniques, Classification and Regression Trees (CART) and Random Forest (RF), were fitted to the data in order to find the most successfully model. Simpson, Shannon diversity and the reciprocal of Simpson indices were used for estimating tree diversity. After collecting terrestrial information on trees in the 100 samples, the tree diversity indices were calculated in each plot. RF with determinate coefficient and RMSE from 56.3 to 63.9 and RMSE from 0.15 to 0.84 has better results than CART algorithms with determinate coefficient 42.3 to 63.3 and RMSE from 0.188 to 0.88. Overall the results showed that the SPOT-HRG satellite data and nonparametric regression could be useful for estimating tree diversity in Hyrcanian forests, North of Iran.