ISPRS-Archives ISPRS - International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences ISPRS-Archives Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci. 2194-9034 Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/isprs-archives-XLII-4-W18-1031-2019 INVESTIGATION OF FOREST CANOPY DENSITY CHANGES IN HYRCANIAN FOREST RESOURCES DURING 1987 TO 2002 USING REMOTE SENSING TECHNOLOGY Taefi Feijani M. 1 Azadnejad S. 2 Homayouni S. 3 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0214-5356 Moradi M. 4 Aerospace Research Institute, Space Systems Research Group, Tehran, I.R. Iran Faculty of Geodesy & Geomatics Engineering, K. N. Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, I.R. Iran Institut National de la Recherché Scinetifique, Québec, Canada Marine Remote Sensing Department, Iranian National Institute of Oceanography and Atmospheric Science (INIOAS), Tehran, I.R. Iran 19 10 2019 XLII-4/W18 1031 1034 Copyright: © 2019 M. Taefi Feijani et al. 2019 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This article is available from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/isprs-archives-XLII-4-W18-1031-2019.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/isprs-archives-XLII-4-W18-1031-2019.pdf

Forest canopy density (FCD) of seventeen protected areas of the Caspian Hyrcanian mixed forest are studied here. A modified version of FCD mapper based on spectral band fusion and customized threshold calibration that is optimized for Hyrcanian forests is used for this purpose. In this project, the results of applying the FCD model on three time series of satellite images have been analysed. This classification is based on the FAO standard and consist of four categories such as no-forest, thin, semi-dense and dense. These images, taken with TM and ETM sensors, belong to three-time series between 1987 and 2002. The results of this study indicate that the rate of growth or destruction of forests has been investigated in the regions. Then, using tables and diagrams of variations, the rate of growth or destruction of forest lands in the corresponding period in each class is determined. The FCD model has the ability to study the canopy loading classes in the annual time series.