A near-real-time tropical deforestation monitoring algorithm based on the CuSum change detection method

Abstract

Tropical forests are currently under pressure from increasing threats. These threats are mostly related to human activities. Earth observations (EO) are increasingly used for monitoring forest cover, especially synthetic aperture radar (SAR), that is less affected than optical sensors by atmospheric conditions. Since the launch of the Sentinel-1 satellites, numerous methods for forest disturbance monitoring have been developed, including near real-time (NRT) operational algorithms as systems providing early warnings on deforestation. These systems include Radar for Detecting Deforestation (RADD), Global Land Analysis and Discovery (GLAD), Real Time Deforestation Detection System (DETER), and Jica-Jaxa Forest Early Warning System (JJ-FAST). These algorithms provide online disturbance maps and are applied at continental/global scales with a Minimum Mapping Unit (MMU) ranging from 0.1 ha to 6.25 ha. For local operators, these algorithms are hard to customize to meet users’ specific needs. Recently, the Cumulative sum change detection (CuSum) method has been developed for the monitoring of forest disturbances from long time series of Sentinel-1 images. Here, we present the development of a NRT version of CuSum with a MMU of 0.03 ha. The values of the different parameters of this NRT CuSum algorithm were determined to optimize the detection of changes using the F1-score. In the best configuration, 68% precision, 72% recall, 93% accuracy and 0.71 F1-score were obtained.