Using of Sentinel-2 images for automation of the forest succession detection

Abstract

The study was performed for the part of the administrative district Milicz. The authors analysed the parcels where the changes in land use, compared to the cadastral data, were found. The areas of interest were the parcels, where agricultural use was abandoned and the forest succession progressed. This paper investigates the possibility of applying satellite images Sentinel-2A for the automation of land use/land cover change detection, mainly in the aspect of monitoring uncontrolled forest succession. The results of the supervised classification of images Sentinel-2A were referred to the results of the traditionally applied manual vectorization of aerial orthophotomap. The difference for area covered by trees or shrub was 3.85% of the analysed parcels area. Analysing the results for each parcel in which the process of succession occurred, the mean difference is on average 2.25% for one parcel. The mean difference in the absolute value of the total area of participation in individual land use plots was about 1.54% of the analysed area.