Siberian Landscape Disturbance Study

Landcover change in Siberia is driven by natural and human factors. Important factors affecting forest cover are wildfire, insect outbreaks, logging, pollution and mineral exploration and exploitation. The MODIS sensor is very good for tracking changes across a wide expanses of territory if the changes expressed at resolutions of 250m to 1 km or larger. It is useful to know at what scale disturbances such as insects, fires and logging can be located and identified in MODIS image data. In this paper, an area in western Siberia where diverse disturbances are present was studied using MODIS and Landsat 7, as well as imaging radar data.