Preliminary Study on the Use of Digital Surface Models for Estimating Vegetation Cover Density in Mountainous Area

Digital surface model (DSM) has been widely available for mapping and was also sometimes used vegetation height. The authors conducted a preliminary study to evaluate the potential use of DSMs derived from ASTER, ALOS, SRTM estimating cover density in mountainous area. This NDVI SAVI indices, addition forest (FCD) as references evaluation. A DSM-based volume index (Volindex) concept is introduced, which product canopy height (CHM) pixel CHM value difference between DSM reference DEM. Volindex then compared with NDVI, FCD. We found that all models are not accurate enough represent density, although ALOS Palsar-based could reach 41.53% accuracy finally predict density.