Estimation of forest stem volume using ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 satellite images

A first evaluation of ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 data for forest stem volume estimation has been performed at a coniferous dominated test site in southern Sweden. Both the Fine Beam Dual (FBD) polarization and the Quad-polarimetric mode were investigated. Forest plots with stem volume reaching up to a maximum of about 620 m³ ha⁻¹ (corresponding to 370 tons ha⁻¹) were analyzed by relating backscatter intensity to field data using an exponential model derived from the Water Cloud Model. The estimation accuracy of stem volume at plot level (0.5 ha) was calculated in terms of Root Mean Square Error (RMSE). For the best case investigated an RMSE of 39.8% was obtained using one of the FBD HV-polarized images. The corresponding RMSE for the FBD HH-polarized images was 43.9%. In the Quad-polarimetric mode the lowest RMSE at HV- and HH-polarization was found to be 43.1% and 66.1%, respectively.