SRTM과 NED를 활8한 산림수고추정 및 수령 추정

Vegetation Height and Age Estimation using Shuttle Radar Topography Mission and National Elevation Datasets

SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) technology, which is not influenced by cloud cover because of using electromagnetic wave of long wavelength, has an advantage in mapping the earth. NASA, recognizing these strong points of SAR, launched SRTM (Shuttle Radar Topography klission), and acquired the topographic information of the earth. SRTM and NED (National Elevation Data) of USGS were used for the research and vegetation height map was produced through differentiating the two data. Correlation between SRTM-NED and planting year was analyzed to see the relationship. Strong correlation was detected and it shows the feasibility of estimating timber age and eventually creating timber age map from SRTM-NED. Additional analyses were conducted to check if the linearity is influenced by regional characteristics and forest uniformity. As results, the correlation between SRTM-NED and timber age is influenced by roughness of the terrain. Overall, this paper shows that timber age estimation using SRTM and NED can be sufficiently practical.