The use of NDVI and CORINE Land Cover databases for forest management in Serbia

Abstract

This article evaluates the possible use of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and CORINE Land Cover (CLC) databases for better forest management in the municipalities of Kuršumlija and Topola in Serbia. The forest areas obtained using CLC were up to 11.5% larger than the official forest area estimates, whereas NDVI gave more precise results. Hence, NDVI can efficiently provide local forest managers with essential annual information about the forest inventory.This is of a crucial importance for preventing illegal logging, which is very prevalent in southern Serbian municipalities, which have substantial forested territory. NDVI thus very promising for Serbia and also for countries that rarely carry out national forest inventories. This method can also easily be applied to other Balkan countries with a similar situation regarding local forest management.