Abstract
Principles of Afforestation, Reforestation, and Deforestation (ARD) provided in Article 3.3 of the Kyoto Protocol should be monitored as land-uses change relative to the base year of 1990. Although the use of remote sensing technology is effective for this purpose, it is difficult to detect land-use changes by digital image analysis. Therefore, the Japanese Government adopted a photo-interpretation method which uses aerial photographs and SPOT-5/HRV-P images for ARD monitoring. In this study, verification of this method was conducted. Kumamoto Prefecture was adopted as study area. Lattice points at 500 m intervals were sampled for photointerpretation. A field survey was performed to evaluate the accuracy of the results obtained by photo-interpretation. The survey indicated values of 68.8 % for AR, and 90.9 % for D. Moreover, the ARD assessment in Akita and Ishikawa Prefectures was interpreted using the same method and the data were compared with the statistical material. The numerical values of both methods corresponded approximately. As a result, the photo-interpretation method enabled monitoring of ARD with a high degree of certainty for the Kyoto Protocol report.
