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Understanding change in forest carbon (C) is important for devising strategies to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. National forest inventories (NFIs) are important to meet international accounting goals, but data are often incomplete going back in time, and the amount of time between remeasurements can make attribution of C flux to specific events difficult. The long time series of Landsat imagery provides spatially comprehensive, consistent information that can be used to fill the gaps in ground measurements with predictive models. To evaluate such models, we relate Landsat spectral changes and disturbance interpretations directly to C flux measured on NFI plots and compare the performance of models with and without ground-measured predictor variables. The study was conducted in the forests of southwest Oregon State, USA, a region of diverse forest types, disturbances, and landowner management objectives. Plot data consisted of 676 NFI plots with remeasured individual tree data over a mean interval (time 1 to time 2) of 10.0 years. We calculated change in live aboveground woody carbon (AWC), including separate components of growth, mortality, and harvest. We interpreted radiometrically corrected annual Landsat images with the TimeSync (TS) tool for a 90 m × 90 m area over each plot. Spectral time series were divided into segments of similar trajectories and classified as disturbance, recovery, or stability segments, with type of disturbance identified. We calculated a variety of values and segment changes from tasseled cap angle and distance (TCA and TCD) as potential predictor variables of C flux. Multiple linear regression was used to model AWC and net change in AWC from the TS change metrics. The TS attribution of disturbance matched the plot measurements 89% of the time regarding whether fire or harvest had occurred or not. The primary disagreement was due to plots that had been partially cut, mostly in vigorous stands where the net change in AWC over the measurement was positive in spite of cutting. The plot-measured AWC at time 2 was 86.0 ± 78.7 Mg C ha−1 (mean and standard deviation), and the change in AWC across all plots was 3.5 ± 33 Mg C ha−1 year−1. The best model for AWC based solely on TS and other mapped variables had an R2 = 0.52 (RMSE = 54.6 Mg C ha−1); applying this model at two time periods to estimate net change in AWC resulted in an R2 = 0.25 (RMSE = 28.3 Mg ha−1) and a mean error of −5.4 Mg ha−1. The best model for AWC at time 2 using plot measurements at time 1 and TS variables had an R2 = 0.95 (RSME = 17.0 Mg ha−1). The model for net change in AWC using the same data was identical except that, because the variable being estimated was smaller in magnitude, the R2 = 0.73. All models performed better at estimating net change in AWC on TS-disturbed plots than on TS-undisturbed plots. The TS discrimination of disturbance between fire and harvest was an important variable in the models because the magnitude of spectral change from fire was greater for a given change in AWC. Regional models without plot-level predictors produced erroneous predictions of net change in AWC for some of the forest types. Our study suggests that, in spite of the simplicity of applying a single carbon model to multiple image dates, the approach can produce inaccurate estimates of C flux. Although models built with plot-level predictors are necessarily constrained to making predictions at plot locations, they show promise for providing accurate updates or back-calculations of C flux assessments.

Integrating TimeSync Disturbance Detection and Repeat Forest Inventory to Predict Carbon Flux