Very High Spatiotemporal EO Monitoring of Vegetation Change

We investigate the potential benefits of combining very high resolution (VHR) Earth observation (EO) images with near hourly temporal resolution for forest watch, covering monitor and detection activities for wildfire and illegal deforestation response. We apply standard Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) to pansharpened multispectral images of WorldView-3 collected on several occasions in the year 2019 and compare the level of details to EO Sentinel-2 images. The latter have lower spatial resolution, however, this is the standard resolution for several forest watch services currently in use. We investigate a monitoring mechanism to enable quick detection of vegetation level change using wide-coverage, very high spatial resolution satellite images that can provide temporal coverage on an hourly-basis. With deforestation in any form (legal, illegal or wildfire caused) being a global problem with a far-reaching impact on, e.g., human health, plant and animal life and climate change, an improvement with a quicker and more detailed operational picture should be easily integrable in the existing forest watch services.