NEAR REAL TIME MULTISENSOR ALGORITHM FOR DEFORESTATION ALERT OVER

THE DRY CHACO FOREST

E. Roitberg, V. Barraza, F. Grings, M. Salvia, P. Perna, M. Barber

CONICET - University of Buenos Aires

Institute of Astronomy and Space Physics (IAFE)
Quantitative Remote Sensing Group
Int. Guiraldes 2700
Buenos Aires, Argentina

ABSTRACT In this article we present a multisensor algorithm for detect-

ing deforestation in the Argentinian part of the Chaco Re-
The objective of this work is to evaluate the performance
gion, with an extension of 675,000 km2 . We focused in the
of a change detection algorithm for deforestation monitoring
Dry Chaco Forest (DCF), which is considered a deforesta-
based on MODIS Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) and Land
tion hot spot by international organisations like World Rain-
Surface Temperature (LST) datasets. The algorithm is based
forest Institute. Nowadays, one of the most important threats
on the statistical characterisation of the EVI and LST his-
to this forest is the fast expansion of agriculture, mainly soy-
torical values for each pixel. The goal is to monitor abrupt
bean. Moreover, the expansion of livestock farming has also
decreases in those variables dynamics, which could be asso-
been documented as a major driver of deforestation in recent
ciated with deforestation events. This model was tested on
years, especially in north-west Argentina around the Chaco
real satellite time series available over a pilot area in Dry
area, due to the international demand of those products. As
Chaco Forest, Argentina, where deforestation was common
for the whole region, the Argentinian Chaco has the highest
in the 2004-2016 period. As validation, a comparison with
absolute deforestation rate of the country [2]. When Humid
a benchmark product based on Landsat images is also pre-
Chaco is included, the most recent report indicates a current
sented, showing a 51.6% precision, 74.4% recall and an F-
deforestation rate for the Chaco region of 200,000 ha year-1
score of 0.60 for deforestation in 2013. These results show
[5].
the advantages of using an automatic algorithm to monitor
break points in the time series and the potential of combining
LST and EVI to identify deforestation events.
Index Terms— Deforestation, MODIS, Near Real Time, The objective of this work is to propose and evaluate an
Dry Chaco Forest algorithm to detect the timing of abrupt phenological changes
using the LST and EVI time series. The main assumption
is that by taking advantage of the different characteristics of
1. INTRODUCTION
multiple datasets, the detection of phenological changes could
be improved. In this context, the main question we address
Deforestation rates in South American Dry Chaco are among
is: Do EVI and LST products provide additional information
the highest in the world [1]. The main drivers of this process
to the traditional optical remote sensing data for time series
are agriculture, logging and cattle ranching [2, 3]. This trans-
analysis? The main hypothesis is that both indices, LST and
formation of the landscape entails several environmental con-
EVI, are sensitive to different vegetation properties - EVI to
sequences: loss of natural habitats and biodiversity, changes
vegetation greenness and Leaf Area Index (LAI), and LST
in biogeochemical cycles, atmospheric dynamics, water ex-
to thermal properties - that should improve the detection of
change and increasing carbon emissions [3]. From a social
deforestation areas.
perspective, the Chaco presents high levels of poverty and in-
equality [3]. In this context, there is a critical need for meth-
ods to detect forest disturbances using remotely sensed data.
Satellite remote sensing enables cost-effective and accu- This work is being developed within the frame of the na-
rate monitoring at regular time steps over large areas [1, 4]. tional Forest Law for the protection and sustainable develop-
This work was funded by PICTO BOSQUES NATIVOS 2014 (N 0099) ment of Native Forest in Argentina in agreement with inter-
and PIP 2015 N 899. national legislation (REDD+).

978-1-5386-7150-4/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE 818 IGARSS 2018

 2. MATERIALS AND METHODS
2.1. Study Area
The DCF ecoregion, Fig.1, is characterised by a monsoonal
climate with a strong seasonality (dry winters, rainy sum-
mers). In particular rainfall varies significantly across the
area. The vegetation is dominated by dry forest trees and
shrubs, but natural grasslands occur in areas with sandy soils
and frequent fires. Most of the ecoregion is flat, with eleva-
tion rising towards the humid, western side. Currently, the
majority of the deforested plots in the studied area are used
for soybean grow [2].
Fig. 1. Study area of the Dry Chaco forest, Argentina.
2.2. Dataset
We used the MODIS EVI product (MOD13Q1) provided ev-
ery 16 days at 250-meter spatial resolution and the MODIS
LST product (MOD11A2, both day and night products), with
8 days temporal and 1-km spatial resolution. MODIS EVI
and LST coarse-resolution products allow the generation of a
monthly alert of a minimum of 6.25 hectares. The main disad-
vantage of using median resolution observations (versus high
resolution) is the inability to detect fine-scale changes. How-
ever, these changes are associated with small scale activities
that do not have a considerable impact in the environment, in
particular when they are compared with the area cleared for
agribusiness. According to [3], mean plot size in Argentina
is 61.99 ± 0.29 ha, averaging ten MODIS pixels and suitable
for detection.
The study period of this work is 2013, while images from
2000 to 2012 are used as historical records. The algorithm
was implemented in the pilot area shown in Fig. 1, with a
size of approximately 2000 km2 (40293 pixels). The corre-
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sponding MODIS tile for this region is h12v11. For validation
purposes, the ”Red Agroforestal Chaco Argentina” (Redaf)
dataset was used (available online). This dataset characterizes
the spatio-temporal dynamics of the transformation of the nat-
ural cover in the Dry Chaco ecoregion from 1976 to 2014. It
contains the plots (as shapes) cleared during each year. This
is used to flag changes in these regions that can be wrongly
detected as deforestation (for example, crop harvesting).
2.3. Algorithm
The algorithm relies on the hypothesis that a deforestation
event produces a) a decrease in the historical value of EVI
from the corresponding date, and b) an increase in the differ-
ence between day and night historical temperature. Hence-
forth, in this work, ∆LST will refer to the difference between
day and night temperature from MODIS products. The time
series of this two variables for a pixel cleared in May 2007 can
be seen in Fig.2. As seen, a decrease in EVI and an increase
in ∆LST is clearly observed.
The algorithm flowchart can be seen in the Fig.3. It takes
as inputs a newly acquired set of EVI and ∆LST images, the
historical series of EVI and LST of the region involved from
2000 until the date of the new set of images (MODIS dataset),
and the historical record of the areas already cleared until that
date (REDAF dataset). From the MODIS dataset, it selects all
the historical values of EVI and ∆LST for all the pixels from
the images of the same Day of Year (DOY). For example, if
the new image is from 21 of July 2013, it looks for all the
EVI and ∆LST values of 21 of July from 2000 to 2012. With
these values, it applies a set of heuristic rules:
• It calculates a percentile of the EVI historical values
and of the ∆LST historical values. These percentiles
1
will work as thresholds Tevi,lst . The value of the per-
centile considered is user defined and it is not the same
for each variable. Typically, it is less than 5 percent for
1 1
the Tevi and more than 80 percent for Tlst . If the new
1
EVI value of a pixel is smaller than Tevi and the ∆LST
1
value is larger than Tlst , the pixel is flagged for first
time.
• It calculates the mean and standard deviation of the set
of historical of values. With the mean and standard
deviation, it calculates a Z-score for the new value of
EVI and ∆LST (Zevi,lst ), for each pixel of the new
image. Afterwards, it calculates again percentiles of
2
the Z-scores that will work as thresholds Tevi,lst . If
2 2
Zevi < Tevi and Zlst > Tlst , the pixel is flagged for
second time.
Once a given pixel is flagged twice, it is considered
cleared. It can be demonstrated that these two different deci-
sions rules working together decrease false positives.
 (a)
(b)
Fig. 2. (a) EVI and (b) ∆LST time series for a pixel cleared
in May 2007
2.4. Validation Dataset
Redaf dataset was used for validation purposes. First, it
was used to check if the algorithm correctly detects the areas
cleared during 2013 in the study area (annual evaluation). Af-
terwards, using Google Earth Engine platform, we selected
the polygons of 2013 from the Redaf dataset for the study
area. Using Landsat monthly composed images we added to
the database the monthly information about the deforestation
event. If an image for a specific month was not available
due to cloud cover, the number of unavailable images was
registered. In this way, it was possible to check if the month
of deforestation reported by the algorithm agrees with the
month that would be reported using high resolution images
(monthly evaluation) and, if it is not the case, calculate the
difference between them.
Two statistical measures were used to evaluate the perfor-
mance of the algorithm: precision - how many of the pixels
820
Fig. 3. Flowchart of the algorithm.
found were contained in the validation dataset - and recall -
how many of the pixels contained in the validation dataset
were found. With these measures, the F-Score of the algo-
rithm was calculated:
precision ∗ recall
F =2 (1)
precision + recall
3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
In Fig.4(a) the annual evaluation of the results is shown. An-
nually, from 1138 ground truth cleared pixels, to be found
between 27194 unflagged pixels, there is a 51.6 percent pre-
cision (847 hits over 1667 found), 74.4 percent recall and an
F-Score of 0.60. However, a visual analysis of the false posi-
tives revealed that there are some geographical characteristics
of the landscape that are not completely flagged (for exam-
ple, cities, roads and extensive farming - puesteros), which
the algorithm detects as deforestation. When cities and roads
are included in the flagged area, and extensive farming is con-
sidered, precision ascends to 62 percent, F-Score to 0.66 and
recall descends to 0.71.
The result of the monthly evaluation is shown in Fig.4(b).
First, it differentiates between pixels whose month of defor-
estation was inspected with or without cloud coverage. After-
wards, it shows the differences between the month detected
and the month reported. As can be seen, most of the pixels
are detected with 0, 1 or 2 months of delay. In the case of
the pixels whose month of deforestation was reported with
two missing data due to cloud coverage, most of them are

(a)
(b)
Fig. 4. Result of the (a) Annual Evaluation and (b) Monthly
Evaluation
detected one month before. This implies that the number of
missing data could be interpreted as one of the error sources
of the validation dataset. For example, when there isn’t any
missing data in the validation dataset, date of deforestation is
well known. In these cases, the algorithm detects almost 30%
with no delay and 30% with one month delay. When there are
two missing data, the algorithm detects more than half of the
pixels cleared one month previous as the deforestation date re-
ported, which also delimits the alert to one month maximum
after the event.
One possible method for reducing the number of false
positives is, considering the results of [3] on mean plot size,
to apply a post-filter selecting only groups of pixels whose
size en hectares is bigger than certain threshold. Preliminary
results show that this is indeed a suitable option.
4. CONCLUSIONS
The complementary information provided by ∆LST and EVI
time series was able to monitor deforestation processes. In
particular, this study illustrated the capability of a change
point detection algorithm to detect changes in long-term EVI
and ∆LST time series in the study area and revealed both a
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temporal and a spatial pattern in the breakpoints. This model
could be used alone or to complement another model. The
main advantage of this model is that the annual deforestation
events were detected with higher accuracies with low com-
putational cost. On the other hand, its main limitation is that
the parameters of this model should be calibrated for each
study area, as it can be shown that is possible to increase the
percentage of hits modifying the parameters of the algorithm.
Fig.4(b) shows that it is important to consider the number of
lost images - due to cloud coverage - in the validation dataset.
This also shows the advantage of using MODIS median reso-
lution images instead of Landsat high resolution images.
Finally, the results obtained in this work are relevant for
the DCF area, since they provide a fast and alternative model
to the traditional visual analysis carried out by the forest ser-
vice. To sum up, the proposed model provides a fast and ac-
curate automatic detection of deforestation at the DCF area.
5. REFERENCES
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