ABSTRACT
Monitoring forest areas on anything greater than local or regional scales would be a major challenge without the use of satellite imagery, in particular, for large and remote regions. Satellite remote sensing combined with a set of ground measurements for verification plays a key role in determining loss of forest cover. This chapter provides an overview of operational remote sensing approaches used to monitor forest cover over large areas. Many methods of satellite imagery analysis can produce adequate results from global to national scales. One of the key issues for forest cover monitoring is that satellite data need to be interpreted (digitally or visually) for forest cover change, i.e., focusing on the interdependent interpretation of multitemporal imagery to detect and characterize changes. Ground reference data are generally recommended as the most appropriate data to assess the accuracy of forest cover change estimation, although their imperfections may introduce biases into estimators of change.
