PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
April 2014
299
BOOK
REVIEW
Global Forest Monitoring from Earth
Observation
Frédéric Achard and Matthew C. Hansen
(Editors)
CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL 2013 xiv and 316 pp., diagrams,
maps, photos, images, index. Hardcover. $129.95.
ISBN 978-1-4665-5201-2
Reviewed by:
Jonathan P. Dandois, Ph.D.
Candidate, Department of Geography and
Environmental Systems, University of Maryland
Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD
Global Forest Monitoring from Earth Observation
reviews the practice of monitoring forest resources at nation-
al, regional, and global extents using satellite-based optical
image remote sensing. The chapters describe techniques for
characterizing forest area and area change using data from
the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)
and Landsat sensor systems. The text emphasizes the value
of free access to Earth Observation (EO) data for supporting
forest monitoring across spatial and temporal scales.
The research presented in the text will be familiar to those
involved in the field. However, the breadth and depth of both
applications and technical descriptions will be useful to policy
makers, land managers, and scientists unfamiliar with forest
monitoring from remote sensing. The text can be read almost
as a guidebook and is organized into 16 chapters that provide
the reader with both the broad context and technical detail for
understanding forest monitoring using MODIS and Landsat
data. While the book has no distinct sections, the chapters are
organized into two main parts: an introduction to forests and
remote sensing of forests using optical imaging (Chapters 1 –
5) and research applications describing the methods used for
forest area estimation and change detection (Chapters 6 – 14).
Chapter 15 discusses the importance of vegetation structure
and applications of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) for forest
monitoring. Chapter 16 provides concluding remarks on the
future of forest monitoring with remote sensing and the need
for more universal access to Earth Observation datasets.
A central theme of the text is the importance of free access
to large amounts of EO data, with particular attention on the
MODIS and Landsat sensor systems (the data for which is
available to users for free with global and long-term coverage).
The authors emphasize throughout that access to these data,
and indeed multiple data sources, is invaluable for under-
standing the state of national, regional, and global forest
resources. Using these data, the authors of several chapters
demonstrate that the accuracies in area and area change
estimation are often comparable to more costly field-based
methods. In those cases, area and area change estimation
had reported errors of 1% - 20% relative to national inven-
tories. Another central theme is the combination, or fusion,
of multiple data sources for forest monitoring applications.
The chapters describe methods or fully-fledged toolsets that
often combine MODIS and Landsat imagery with data from
other sensors (e.g., IKONOS, SPOT; Chapters 6, 7, 8, 9, 11,
13, & 14), and three chapters make use of free high spatial
resolution imagery in GoogleEarth for validating forest area
products (Chapters 7, 8, & 11).
The individual chapters are prepared with sufficient detail
to allow those unfamiliar with forest monitoring to grasp the
concepts and methods involved. The authors utilize tables,
diagrams, and color figures to demonstrate work-flows and
data products. By covering applications that range from global
monitoring of forest area to rapid detection of deforestation on
an almost real-time/daily basis, the authors demonstrate that
access to EO data is vital for current land management and
forest policy programs.
There is, however, a dearth of discussion of LIDAR (Light
Detection and Ranging) remote sensing for evaluating forests
across large spatial extents. Several authors mention the
value of lidar forest structure measurements for assessing the
quality and carbon content of forest areas (Chapters 2, 11, &
12), yet there is no mention of such instruments in the con-
cluding chapter of the text and no single chapter highlights
lidar forest monitoring research. As the text has demonstrat-
ed, those engaged in forest monitoring make use of remote
sensing data collected from a wide range of sources, including
different satellite sensors, and ground and airborne observa-
tions. Already, lidar collected at ‘wall-to-wall’ extents is being
used for national and regional level forest monitoring, and sat-
ellite based lidar measurements from the GLAS (Geoscience
Laser Altimeter System) instrument on the ICESat satellite
