Dynamics of forest disturbance in central part of the Šumava mountains between 1985 and 2007 based on Landsat TM/ETM+ satellite data
2008
Abstract
During the last more than twenty years, various types of forest disturbance (i.e. insect outbreak, clearcutting) occurred in the central part of the Šumava Mountains. The bark beetle (Ips typographus [L.]) outbreak in this region resulted in regional-scale spruce forest decay.
Clear-cutting was done here to prevent further bark-beetle propagation in the buffer zones. Dynamics of the disturbance types has been analyzed by processing 15 satellite Landsat TM/ETM+ scenes from the years 1985, 1987, 1989, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006and 2007.
Supervised classification (Maximum Likelihood) was used to identify deforested areas.