Inconsistent estimates of forest cover change in China between 2000 and 2013 from multiple datasets: differences in parameters, spatial resolution, and definitions.

ABSTRACT: The Chinese National Forest Inventory (NFI) has reported increased forest coverage in China since 2000, however, the new satellite-based dataset Global Forest Change (GFC) finds decreased forest coverage. In this study, four satellite datasets are used to investigate this discrepancy in forest cover change estimates in China between 2000 and 2013: forest cover change estimated from MODIS Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR), existing MODIS Land Cover (LC) and Vegetation Continuous Fields (VCF) products, and the Landsat-based GFC. Among these satellite datasets, forest loss shows much better agreement in terms of total change area and spatial pattern than do forest gain. The net changes in forest cover as a proportion of China's land area varied widely from increases of 1.56% in NBR, 1.93% in VCF, a

SUBMITTER: Li Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5562877 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature