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Temporary roads are often placed in mountainous regions for logging purposes but then never decommissioned and removed. These abandoned forest roads often have unwanted environmental consequences. They can lead to altered hydrological regimes, excess erosion, and mass wasting events. These events can affect sediment budgets in streams, with negative consequences for anadromous fish populations. Maps of these roads are frequently non-existent; therefore, methods need to be created to identify and locate these roads for decommissioning. Abandoned logging roads in the Point Reyes National Seashore in California, an area partially under heavy forest canopy, were mapped using object-based image processing in concert with machine learning. High-resolution Q1 LiDAR point clouds from 2019 were used to create a bare earth model of the region, from which a slope model was derived. This slope model was then subjected to segmentation algorithms to identify and isolate regions of differing slopes. Regions of differing slopes were then used in a convolutional neural network (CNN), and a maximum likelihood classifier was used to delineate the historic road network. The accuracy assessment was conducted using historic aerial photos of the state of the region post-logging, along with ground surveys to verify the presence of logging roads in areas of question. This method was successfully able to identify road networks with a precision of 0.991 and an accuracy of 0.992. It was also found that the CNN was able to identify areas of highest disturbance to the slope gradient. This methodology is a valuable tool for decision makers who need to identify areas of high disturbance in order to mitigate adverse effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

LiDAR-derived slope models may be used to detect abandoned logging roads in steep forested terrain. An object-based classification approach of abandoned logging road detection was employed in this study. First, a slope model of the study site in Marin County, California was created from a LiDAR derived DEM. Multiresolution segmentation was applied to the slope model and road seed objects were iteratively grown into candidate objects. A road classification accuracy of 86% was achieved using this fully automated procedure and post processing increased this accuracy to 90%. In order to assess the sensitivity of the road classification to LiDAR ground point spacing, the LiDAR ground point cloud was repeatedly thinned by a fraction of 0.5 and the classification procedure was reapplied. The producer’s accuracy of the road classification declined from 79% with a ground point spacing of 0.91 to below 50% with a ground point spacing of 2, indicating the importance of high point density for accurate classification of abandoned logging roads.

In this study, the recently launched Sentinel-2 (S2) optical satellite and the active radar Sentinel-1 (S1) satellite supported by active fire data from the MODIS sensor were used to detect and monitor forest fires in the Congo Basin. In the context of a very strong El Niño event, an unprecedented outbreak of fires was observed during the first months of 2016 in open forests formations in the north of the Republic of Congo. The anomalies of the recent fires and meteorological situation compared to historical data show the severity of the drought. Burnt areas mapped by the S1 SAR and S2 Multi Spectral Instrument (MSI) sensors highlight that the fires occurred mainly in Marantaceae forests, characterized by open tree canopy cover and an extensive tall herbaceous layer. The maps show that the origin of the fires correlates with accessibility to the forest, suggesting an anthropogenic origin. The combined use of the two independent and fundamentally different satellite systems of S2 and S1 captured an extent of 36,000 ha of burnt areas, with each sensor compensating for the weakness (cloud perturbations for S2, and sensitivity to ground moisture for S1) of the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

LiDAR-derived slope models may be used to detect abandoned logging roads in steep forested terrain. An object-based classification approach of abandoned logging road detection was employed in this study. First, a slope model of the study site in Marin County, California was created from a LiDAR derived DEM. Multiresolution segmentation was applied to the slope model and road seed objects were iteratively grown into candidate objects. A road classification accuracy of 86% was achieved using this fully automated procedure and post processing increased this accuracy to 90%. In order to assess the sensitivity of the road classification to LiDAR ground point spacing, the LiDAR ground point cloud was repeatedly thinned by a fraction of 0.5 and the classification procedure was reapplied. The producer's accuracy of the road classification declined from 79% with a ground point spacing of 0.91 to below 50% with a ground point spacing of 2, indicating the importance of high point density for accurate classification of abandoned logging roads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]