Talk to be held at the workshop on image analysis and spatial statistics in forestry on November 2, 1999 at KVL, Frederiksberg, Denmark
Charles Burnett (charles.burnett@utu.fi) Digital Cartography Laboratory, University of Turku, Turku, Finland.
"Landscapes of the Past, Present and Future: conquering compatibility problems to visualise and compare spatial data" (www.utu.fi/ml/maantiede/maisema/) is a research project funded through the Academy of Finland Information Research Programme until the end of 2001. The project goal is to develop methods for collecting, merging, analysing and serving geo-spatial data that varies both in spatial scale and time in order to produce effective new tools for utilising digital information on environment processes and on human and natural landscapes. The researchers use data from two main study areas, both having complex land use issues. The island of Ruissalo is regarded as the most important recreation area in the Turku region and is a nature reserve containing the largest oak woodlands in Finland. Russian Karelia, on the other hand, is a vast hinterland, containing some of the last unprotected taiga forests in the world, with great potential for tourism and ecological conservation but under pressure from commerc
The presentation will be divided into two parts:
Part I. Extraction of forest information from high spatial resolution (0.3-1m) and multi-spectral (MEIS-II and CASI) remotely-sensed imagery using the ITC (Individual Tree Crown) suite developed by Francois Gougeon, Don Leckie and colleagues at the Pacific Forestry Centre, Canadian Forest Service, Victoria, Canada. Recent additions to the suite include the incorporation of vector-based individual tree databases to evaluate automatic tree delineation and classification.
Part II. The second half of the presentation will focus on some of the spatial analysis steps planned for the extraction of forest information from the UTU project's 2m digital camera, 2m AISA, SPOT and TM data sets.