Peatlands are important in terms of CO2 storage, water cycling, biochemical cycles, biodiversity, and ecosystem services
Peatlands are constantly altered and damaged due to agriculture and drainage.

Thus it is crucial to manage them sustainably. Hainner Aparicio*, Evelyn Wallor, Jan-Peter Mund investigated whether it is possible to generate a method to record the location of peatlands under forests at high resolution using remote sensing?

Our MAIN RESEARCH QUESTION therefore is: Is it possible to generate a method to record the location of peatlands under forests at high resolution using remote sensing?

The studied methods are relevant to forecast peatland’s locations under forests:
– ALOS L-band SAR signals offered better detection capabilities and results
– Dataset balance in terms of point sample size by class, forest type cover and terrain indexes were
– key factors to improve accuracy
– Classification of peat soils reached OA = 0.88, kappa = 0.67, recall = 0.72, precision = 0.79
– Launch of L, P-Band SAR missions potentialize the applicability of future results

Hainner Aparicio presents the work flow and results at the European Space Agency’s 2022 Living Planet Symposium, in May 2022 in Bonn. Browse the poster presentation here DOI:10.13140/RG.2.2.12476.51848.