Outerra forum

Outerra Engine => Ideas & Suggestions & Questions => Topic started by: Basroks on November 14, 2013, 07:16:45 pm

Title: Global forest map
Post by: Basroks on November 14, 2013, 07:16:45 pm

Have you seen this? Could this data be of any use?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24934790 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24934790)

Title: Re: Global forest map
Post by: cameni on November 15, 2013, 01:53:18 am

There are several datasets derived from MODIS (I believe the above is coming from that too), that could be of use. Currently we are using the vegetation index value and a threshold to determine where the trees are, but it's not very good because the needleleaf trees in some areas have the index lower than some low vegetation. We will probably incorporate a separate forest cover dataset, and adjust the existing vegetation index to mean the ground-level vegetation cover only.

Title: Re: Global forest map
Post by: Basroks on November 17, 2013, 05:09:58 pm

Ah. I didn't think about the issue with different types of forest. Anyway, as far as I can determine, MODIS data comes from the satellites Terra and Aqua while the Global Forest Change data comes from the Landsat 7 satellite. The latter has a resolution of 30 meters, which I think is a bit better than the MODIS data? Not sure what other differences there are.