Monitoring soil disturbance on salvaged areas within the mountain pine beetle infestation using digital imagery

There is a concern that the accelerated timber harvest in the mountain pine beetle epidemic area of British Columbia (BC) could compromise long-term forest productivity if soils are unduly disturbed. Consequently, the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resources Operations (MFLNRO) developed a protocol using groundand image-based methods to assess the status of the forest soil resource in part of the BC Forest and Range Evaluation Program (FREP). Although this protocol uses high-resolution aerial imagery, the MFLNRO is also collecting beetle imagery at a smaller scale for detecting and monitoring. For this evaluation, we use a combination of groundand imagery-based assessments as developed for FREP within the BC Interior Plateau. We determined that low-resolution data are useful and are sufficient for detecting and measuring the extent of roads and landings. Areas occupied by landslides, erosion, drainage diversion, inordinate disturbance, or roadside work areas can be captured on remotesensed images with spatial resolution greater than 2.5 m. However, based on this review and previous work, aerial photographs in 10-cm pixel size are best suited to reveal less evident harvesting-related soil disturbance. © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI. [DOI: 10.1117/1.JRS.7.073541]