Comparison of capability of SAR and optical data in mapping forest above ground biomass based on machine learning

Assessment of forest above ground biomass (AGB) is critical for managing forest and understanding the role of forest as source of carbon fluxes. Recently, satellite remote sensing products offer the chance to map forest biomass and carbon stock. The present study focuses on comparing the potential use of combination of ALOSPALSAR and Sentinel-1 SAR data, with Sentinel-2 optical data to estimate above ground biomass and carbon stock using Genetic-Random forest machine learning (GA-RF) algorithm. Polarimetric decompositions, texture characteristics and backscatter coefficients of ALOSPALSAR and Sentinel-1, and vegetation indices, tasseled cap, texture parameters and principal component analysis (PCA) of Sentinel-2 based on measured AGB samples were used to estimate biomass. The overall coefficient (R2) of AGB modelling using combination of ALOSPALSAR and sentinel-1 data, and sentinel-2 data were respectively 0.70 and 0.62. The result showed that Combining ALOSPALSAR and Sentinel-1 data to predict AGB by using GA-RF model performed better than Sentinel-2 data.