Quantifying forest cover at Mount Kenya: Use of Sentinel-2 for a discrimination of tropical tree composites

A study using ESA’s Sentinel-2 satellites (S2A and S2B) reveals significant differences in spectral separability between tropical tree composites at Mount Kenya, highlighting the importance of SWIR and red-edge wavelengths for accurate forest classification. The research validates ESA’s 2016 prototype land cover map of Africa, identifying overrepresentation of tree cover areas and underrepresentation of water bodies. By employing a decision tree based on altitudinal ranges and supported by Google Earth imagery and Kenyan Forest Service data, the study discriminates four natural forest subclasses and one non-natural class, contributing to improved tropical forest monitoring methodologies.

Jonas, F., Martin, K., & Daniel, W. (2020). Quantifying forest cover at Mount Kenya: Use of Sentinel-2 for a discrimination of tropical tree composites. African Journal of Environmental Science and Technology, 14(6), 159–176. https://doi.org/10.5897/ajest2020.2832