Correlation Analysis Between Forest Volume, ETM+ Bands, and Height Estimated from C-Band SRTM Product

Forest stand height and volume are important indicators for management purpose as well as for the environmental analysis. Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) is backscattered over forest canopy and DSM can be acquired from such scattering characteristic, while National Elevation Dataset (NED) provides bare earth elevation data. The difference between SRTM and NED is estimated as tree height, and it is correlated with forest parameters, it is correlated with forest parameters, including average DBH, Trees per acre, net BF per acre, and total Net MBF. Especially, among them, net Board Foot(BF) per acre is the index that well represents forest volume. The Project site was Douglas-fir dominating plantation area in the western Washington an the northern Oregon in the U.S. This study shows a relationship of high correlation between the forest parameters and the product from SRTM, NED, and ETM+. This research performs multi regression analysis and regression tree algorithm, and can get more improved relationship between several parameters.