DETECTING FORESTS DAMAGED BY PINE WILT DISEASE AT THE INDIVIDUAL TREE LEVEL USING AIRBORNE LASER DATA AND WORLDVIEW-2/3 IMAGES OVER TWO SEASONS

Pine wilt disease is caused by the pine wood nematode (<i>Bursaphelenchus xylophilus</i>) and Japanese pine sawyer (<i>Monochamus alternatus</i>). This study attempted to detect damaged pine trees at different levels using a combination of airborne laser scanning (ALS) data and high-resolution space-borne images. A canopy height model with a resolution of 50&thinsp;cm derived from the ALS data was used for the delineation of tree crowns using the Individual Tree Detection method. Two pan-sharpened images were established using the ortho-rectified images. Next, we analyzed two kinds of intensity-hue-saturation (IHS) images and 18 remote sensing indices (RSI) derived from the pan-sharpened images. The mean and standard deviation of the 2 IHS images, 18 RSI, and 8 bands of the WV-2 and WV-3 images were extracted for each tree crown and were used to classify tree crowns using a support vector machine classifier. Individual tree crowns were assigned to one of nine classes: bare ground, <i>Larix kaempferi</i>, <i>Cryptomeria japonica</i>, <i>Chamaecyparis obtusa</i>, broadleaved trees, healthy pines, and damaged pines at slight, moderate, and heavy levels. The accuracy of the classifications using the WV-2 images ranged from 76.5 to 99.6&thinsp;%, with an overall accuracy of 98.5&thinsp;%. However, the accuracy of the classifications using the WV-3 images ranged from 40.4 to 95.4&thinsp;%, with an overall accuracy of 72&thinsp;%, which suggests poorer accuracy compared to those classes derived from the WV-2 images. This is because the WV-3 images were acquired in October 2016 from an area with low sun, at a low altitude.