Detection of Forest Disturbances with Different Intensities Using Landsat Time Series Based on Adaptive Exponentially Weighted Moving Average Charts

Abstract

Forest disturbance detection is important for revealing ecological changes. Long-time series remote sensing analysis methods have emerged as the primary approach for detecting large-scale forest disturbances. Many of the existing change detection algorithms focus primarily on identifying high-intensity forest disturbances, such as harvesting and fires, with only a limited capacity to detect both high-intensity and low-intensity forest disturbances. This study proposes an online continuous change detection algorithm for the detection of multi-intensity forest disturbances such as forest harvest, fire, selective harvest, and insects. To initiate the proposed algorithm, the time series of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) is fitted into a harmonic regression model, which is then followed by the computation of residuals. Next, the residual time series is entered into the adaptive exponentially weighted moving average (AEWMA) chart. This chart adaptively adjusts the smoothing coefficients to identify both high-intensity and low-intensity disturbances. When the chart value consistently deviates from the control limit, the forest pixel is classified as disturbed. With an overall spatial accuracy of 85.2%, including 86.1% producer’s accuracy and 84% user’s accuracy, along with a temporal accuracy of 96.7%, the algorithm enables precise and timely detection of forest disturbances with multiple intensities. This method provides a robust solution for detecting multi-intensity disturbances in forested regions.