AGROFORESTRY TREE DENSITY ESTIMATION BASED ON HEMISPHERICAL PHOTOS & LANDSAT 8 OLI/TIRS IMAGE: A CASE STUDY AT CIDANAU WATERSHED, BANTEN-INDONESIA

Abstract. The Cidanau watershed is the only watershed in Indonesia that implements Payment for Environmental Services (PES) for farmers who can maintain tree/stand density of 500 trees/hectare on their land. Payments are made upon the verification on the field by the project supervisor. This method requires a lot of time and costly, so it is necessary to build more efficient indirect methods, including using satellite imagery or camera data. The aim of this study is to understand Landsat OLI 8 and hemispherical photo can estimate tree density in the farmer’s agroforestry stand. To obtain tree density, the number of trees with diameter more than 10 cm in 50 plots (50 m x 50 m) were counted. Some predictor variables were utilized, such as Leaf Area Index (LAI) based on hemispherical photos, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Forest Cover Density (FCD), as well as NDVI and FCD which were enhanced with topographic correction. The imagery used was Landsat 8 OLI acquired on July 5, 2015, with Path/Row 123/64. The relationship between tree density and predictor variables was done using linear regression analysis. Prior to regression analysis, normality (Kolmogorov Smirnov/K-S), heteroscedasticity (Glejser test) and auto correlation (Durbin Watson) test were performed. The results of the analysis showed that tree density was estimated better with hemispherical photos-based LAI, with determination coefficient of 80.6%. Meanwhile, estimation using NDVI and FCD has lower determination coefficient. Even though, the use of topographic correction had been able to increase the determination coefficient of the regression relationship between tree density and FCD, from 4.64% to 35.18%.