Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate how to use remote sensing data when making a forest management plan. The main focus of the study is to compare different methods to identify forest stands of a forest property, and by manual measures and estimates try to evaluate the quality of interpreting data.

This report is based on survey questions sent to five different organizations working with remote sensing data. Only two of these where willing to participate in this investigation. The organizations where asked to analyze the same forest property and divide into compartments and make estimations of volume, basal area etc. in every stand. They were also asked to use the new National Elevation model produced by the National Land Survey of Sweden (Lantmäteriet) as base data.

The results of the investigation show that base attributes like tree height and diameter affects the volume in different ways. It also shows that some values like number of stems per hectare might vary considerably while stand volume varied less using the different methods.