Combining Cellular Phone Images and Wall-to-Wall Satellite Imagery in Forest Management Planning

A system that combines forest variable information from cellular phone images with remote sensing data was developed. The system utilizes the central projection geometry of the cell phone images by applying the so called relascope principle to derive information on stem basal area, that is closely related to forest biomass. Information on tree species and forest types is also collected with the cellular phones. The forest variable information with GPS coordinates from the cell phone images are geo-located in satellite images and used as training data. Another independent image set is used for the accuracy assessment. The predictions from the satellite data are input to the "Planner Engine" that outputs forest resources information for every forest stand, and feeds them into a Geographical Information System (GIS).