Characteristics and Seasonal variations in reflectance of evergreen forest including Madake and Mousouchiku bamboo determined by using ALOS/AVNIR-2

Abstract

Abandoned bamboo groves are vigorously spreading their distribution in Japan, causing various problems such as landslides and reduction of biodiversity. In order to help monitoring expansion of the two most common local species of bamboo Phyllostachys bambusoides Sieb. et Zucc. and P. heterocycla (Carr.) Mitf., this study was designed to find out characteristics of land covers by analyzing the distribution of satellite image DN (pixel value) obtained from each land covers. We used ALOS/AVNIR-2 satellite images of the northwestern Chiba Prefecture which have 10m spatial resolution and were taken in October of 2008, and February, March, April, May, August and September of 2009. Google Earth images and data from field research were utilized to set sampling areas for each land covers to be extracted DN. Distributions of DN showed, from the viewpoints of phenology, that data of red and infrared band in Feburary and May are useful to extract P. bambusoides and P. heterocycla and a strong possibility that these two species can be divided by ALOS/AVNIR-2.