Identification method of vegetation cover changes derived from mosaic Landsat-8 Data: Case Study Sumatera, Kalimantan, and Java Island

Abstract

Vegetation cover changes information is essential in forest and plantation management. Low-resolution remote sensing in mosaic data format has been widely used for vegetation cover change mapping on a global scale by implementing the threshold method. However, the problem with this method in Landsat-8 - which has a higher resolution - is that it is challenging to obtain the appropriate value due to the diversity of Indonesia's land ecosystems. This research aimed to determine the threshold value for detecting devegetation and revegetation to identify vegetation cover changes rapidly. This research used Oldeman Climate Classification with zone A and B as the references. The threshold values to classify vegetation cover changes were derived from the delta Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR) of Analysis Ready Data (ARD) Landsat-8 - taken in Sumatera as the pilot area. Moreover, the proposed method was also applied to Kalimantan and Java Islands, with have identical climates. The results indicated that dNBR threshold for devegetation was more than 0.376, while revegetation was less than -0.269. These results were evaluated using high-resolution satellite imagery and ground-truth information. It concluded that Kalimantan Island obtained good results in mapping vegetation cover change with the threshold; however, Java Island required further adjustment for the threshold.