PALSAR-Landsat forest land cover change map 2007–10 of Mahdia mining district (central Guyana), including 2 detail maps (red boxes). For comparison, the PALSAR-Landsat FLC maps for 2007 and 2010 are depicted in addition with the left detailed map (Reiche et al. 2012, JSTARS)


Synergy of optical and radar time series data for large area for change assessments in the tropical countries

The PhD research focuses on the development of multi-sensor time series approaches for monitoring tropical deforestation and degradation in support of REDD+ MRV by combining the advantages of optical and SAR time-series. The undergoing research aims for:

  1. Understanding SAR and optical remote sensing time-series signals of deforested and degraded tropical forest, caused by different drivers
  2. Multi-sensor approach that utilizes limited optical time-series to confirm tropical deforestation and degradation detected in dense SAR time-series
  3. Multi-sensor SAR-optical near-real time forest change detection approach
  4. Evaluating tropical forest monitoring towards the Sentinel era