A novel approach towards continuous monitoring of forest change dynamics in fragmented landscapes using time series Landsat imagery

Carbon emissions from forest ecosystems are greatly impacted by the acceleration of fragmentation and edge effects. Understanding these effects requires accurate monitoring of changes in fragmented forest landscapes. However, these changes are often low-intensity and small-scale, making it difficult to detect them using medium spatial resolution satellite images (e.g., Landsat). To address this challenge, this study developed the Pure Forest Index (PFI), which uses a combination of the existing vegetation index (VI) and spectral mixture analysis (SMA) to more effectively detect and characterize the contribution of forests to the observed spectral response of a pixel. The PFI was applied to detect forest changes in the Amazon rainforest from 1986 to 2020 using the Continuous Change Detection and Classification (CCDC) algorithm (hereafter referred to as the CCDC-PFI algorithm). The results showed reliable performance in mapping forest changes, with an overall accuracy of 0.94 (+/- 0.03) at the spatial scale and a temporal accuracy of 91.1 % (within a two-year window). Comparison with other indices revealed that the PFI improves the ability to monitor forest dynamics with an increased overall accuracy of 0.02-0.35. The PFI also demonstrated advantages in enhancing sub-pixel forest information and suppressing non-forest backgrounds in various scenes compared to conventional VIs. The proposed approach is expected to benefit further research on forests and ecosystems.

Automated summary

This study developed the Pure Forest Index (PFI) using a combination of the existing vegetation index (VI) and spectral mixture analysis (SMA) to effectively detect and characterize forest changes. The PFI demonstrated reliable performance in mapping forest dynamics in the Amazon rainforest and improved monitoring accuracy compared to other indices. This approach has important implications for further research on forests and ecosystems.