US-IALE 2018

AUTHORS: Peter Vogt, European Commission, Joint Research Centre

ABSTRACT: National reporting on forest land cover is often derived from forest inventory plot data and summarized in statistical indices and tabular figures. Yet, this kind of reporting scheme is subject to the intrinsic limitations of any summary index, which is the lack of spatial information on the arrangement and configuration of forest cover. As a direct consequence, these indices may be of limited use for landscape planning or risk assessment studies, where the detection of hotspots and the information of spatial heterogeneity is an essential prerequisite. The solution to this problem is to provide map products with comprehensive measures of the spatial patterns of forest cover and the degree of forest fragmentation. This study illustrates a methodology for a satellite-based accounting scheme providing information on forest area, forest spatial patterns and the degree of forest fragmentation. Geographic maps showing the location and area coverage of forest patches and their degree of fragmentation (intact, interior, dominant, transitional, patchy and rare forest) provide a concise spatial summary on the state of forest. The proposed analysis scheme is based on geometric principles only and can be applied to any kind of forest raster maps, independent of the spatial resolution or the definition of forest. The methodology is available in the free software GuidosToolbox (http://forest.jrc.ec.europa.eu/download/software/guidos) and illustrated for European Union Member States using the most recent 20m-resolution Copernicus 2015 forest map.