On the Identification of Agroforestry Application Areas Using Object-Oriented Programming

The detection of possible areas for the application of agroforestry is essential and involves the usage of various technics. The recognition of forest types using satellite or aerial imagery is the first step toward this goal. This is a tedious task involving the application of remote sensing techniques and a variety of computer software. The overall performance of this approach is very good and the resulting land use maps can be considered of high accuracy. However, there is also the need for performing high-speed characterization using techniques that can determine forest types automatically and produce quick and acceptable results without the need for specific software. This paper presents a comprehensive methodology that uses Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data derived from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument (MODIS) aboard the TERRA satellite. The software developed automatically downloads data using Google Earth Engine and processes them using Google Colab, which are both free-access platforms. The results from the analysis were exported to ArcGIS for evaluation and comparison against the CORINE land cover inventory using the latest update (2018).