Mangrove Carbon Stocks Mapping in Southeast Sulawesi Using Polarimetric and Interferometric ALOS PALSAR Dual-Polarizations Data

Abstract

Mapping of carbon stocks plays important role to study the climate change. The understanding of carbon stocks dynamics on the earth leads us to prepare the climate change mitigation and adaptation. This paper was aimed to analyze mangrove carbon stocks using radar remote sensing data of ALOS PALSAR dual-polarizations. The study area is in Southeast Sulawesi (Lainea District). Two dates acquisition of ALOS PALSAR were used to obtain carbon stocks spatial distribution through polarimetric (PolSAR) and polarimetric-interferometry (PolInSAR) method. Tweenty sample plots were established in study area for validation. Field survey conducted to measure Diameter at Breast Height (DBH) and mangrove tree height to obtain actual carbon stocks. The result of the research indicated that the PolSAR method using HV polarization was suitable to map mangrove carbon stocks which can be estimated up to 40 t ha-1 (R2=0.8982), while using PolInSAR can be estimated up to 60 t ha-1 (R2=0.6606). However, the disadvantage of PolSAR method which indicated saturation problem of backscatter correlation (HH and HV) to carbon stocks volume. Using the PolInSAR, we obtained mangrove tree height in the site distributed from 0 to 25 meters which less than 20 meters heights dominated the study area.