Abstract
The forest conditions of North Korea has been a great concern since it was known to be closely related to many environmental problems of the disastrous flooding, soil erosion, and food shortage. To assess the long-term changes of forest area as well as the canopy conditions, several sources of multitemporal satellite data were applied to the study area near Kaesung. KOMPSAT-1 EOC data were overlaid with 1981 topographic map showing the boundaries of forest to assess the deforestation area. Delineation of the cleared forest was performed by both visual interpretation and unsupervised classification. For analyzing the change of forest canopy condition, multiple scenes of Landsat and SPOT data were selected. After preprocessing of the multitemporal satellite data, such as image registration and normalization, the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) was derived as a representation of forest canopy conditions. Although the panchromatic EOC data had radiometric limitation to classify diverse cover types, they can be effectively used t detect and delineate the deforested area. The results showed that a large portion of forest land has been cleared for the urban and agricultural uses during the last twenty years. It was also found that the canopy condition of remaining forests has not been improved for the last twenty years. It was also found that the canopy condition of remaining forests has not been improved for the last twenty years. Possible causes of the deforestation and the temporal pattern of canopy conditions are discussed.
