Abstract
Forest covers about a third of terrestrial land surface, with tropical and subtropical zones being a major part. Remote sensing applications constitute a significant approach to monitoring forests. Thus, this paper reviews the progress made by remote sensing data applications to tropical and sub-tropical natural forest monitoring over the last two decades (2000–2020). The review focuses on the thematic areas of aboveground biomass and carbon estimations, tree species identification, tree species diversity, and forest cover and change mapping. A systematic search of articles was performed on Web of Science, Science Direct, and Google Scholar by applying a Boolean operator and using keywords related to the thematic areas. We identified 50 peer-reviewed articles that studied tropical and subtropical natural forests using remote sensing data. Asian and South American natural forests are the most highly researched natural forests, while African natural forests are the least studied. Medium spatial resolution imagery was extensively utilized for forest cover and change mapping as well as aboveground biomass and carbon estimation. In the latest studies, high spatial resolution imagery and machine learning algorithms, such as Random Forest and Support Vector Machine, were jointly utilized for tree species identification. In this review, we noted the promising potential of the emerging high spatial resolution satellite imagery for the monitoring of natural forests. We recommend more research to identify approaches to overcome the challenges of remote sensing applications to these thematic areas so that further and sustainable progress can be made to effectively monitor and manage sustainable forest benefits.
Highlights
Forests cover approximately one-third of the earth’s land surface area [1], and tropical and sub-tropical forests form a major component of the total area
The world’s largest tropical and subtropical forests are located in the Amazon region, followed by the tropical forests of Central and West African, termed as the Guineo-Congolian region, while the third-largest tropical forest region is located in Southeast Asia [10]
The search was conducted with a Boolean operator “AND” and a combination of keywords, which were “remote sensing” AND “forest cover” AND “classification” AND “mapping” AND “natural” AND “forest tree species identification” AND “biomass” AND “carbon” AND “diversity.” This search returned 6820 articles that were generally related to the keywords used for the search
Summary
Forests cover approximately one-third of the earth’s land surface area [1], and tropical and sub-tropical forests form a major component of the total area. As many authors pointed out, forests provide various ecosystem services for people and the planet, including ecological, economic, social, and recreational functions at local, regional, and global scales [6]. Ecosystem services refer to the benefit that people derive from ecosystems and are co-produced through interactions between ecosystems and societies [7]. Forests support millions of rural people’s direct livelihoods, providing food, medicine, fuel, fibre, non-timber forest products (NTFPs), and social and cultural functions [8,9]. The world’s largest tropical and subtropical forests are located in the Amazon region, followed by the tropical forests of Central and West African, termed as the Guineo-Congolian region, while the third-largest tropical forest region is located in Southeast Asia [10]
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