Mangrove Above Ground Biomass Estimation using Combination of Landsat 8 and Alos Palsar Data

Mangrove ecosystem is important coastal ecosystem, both ecologically and economically. Mangrove provides rich-carbon stock, most carbon-rich forest among ecosystems of tropical forest. It is very important for the country to have a large mangrove area in the context of global community of climate change policy related to emission trading in the Kyoto Protocol. Estimation of mangrove carbon-stock using remote sensing data plays an important role in emission trading in the future. Estimation models of above ground mangrove biomass are still limited and based on common forest biomass estimation models that already have been developed. Vegetation indices are commonly used in the biomass estimation models, but they have low correlation results according to several studies. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data with capability in detecting volume scattering has potential applications for biomass estimation with better correlation. This paper describes a new model which was developed using a combination of optical and SAR data. Biomass is volume dimension related to canopy and height of the trees. Vegetation indices could provide two dimensional information on biomass by recording the vegetation canopy density and could be well estimated using optical remote sensing data. One more dimension to be 3 dimensional feature is height of three which could be provided from SAR data. Vegetation Indices used in this research was NDVI extracted from Landsat 8 data and height of tree estimated from ALOS PALSAR data. Calculation of field biomass data was done using non-decstructive allometric based on biomass estimation at 2 different locations that are Segara Anakan Cilacap but the result was quite good for areas dominated by high trees. To improve the accuracy of tree height estimation, this method still needs validation using more data