Sentinel-2 satellite-based analysis of bark beetle damage in Sopron Mountains, Hungary

Abstract

Sopron mountains were affected by bark beetle ( Ips typographus ) damage between 2017 and 2020, which was surveyed on high-resolution ESA Sentinel-2 satellite images for the period 2017 and 2020 using Mosaic Hub, Anaconda, and Jupyter Notebook web-based computing environments. Biotic forest damage was detected based on vegetation (NDVI) and moisture (MSI, NDWI) indices derived from satellite images. The spatial and temporal change of damage was observed in the image series, resulting in information about the level of degradation and regeneration. In pursuance of GIS processing, 84 forest compartments were compared, which showed in most of the cases (97%) negative interannual change in the index mean values (MSI = - 0.14, NDWI = - 0.2, NDVI= - 0.19) when years compared to each other. The remote sensing-based survey was marked out and validated based on the forest database of the Hungarian Division of Forest of National Land Centre and forest protection damage reports of the Hungarian National Forest Damage Registration System.