Vegetation Cover Change Analyses in Norway

* Corresponding author. ** This work has been sponsored by the Norwegian Space Centre and the Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management Abstract – Various change analyses based on remote sensing data have been made in different parts of Norway. The objective is to develop robust methods for detecting long term changes in vegetation cover based on monitoring intervals from three to five years. The change monitoring has a long term perspective, and is therefore not tailored to specific satellites or sensors. The changes of interest might be due to changes in agricultural practice, natural hazards, climate change or changes in the hydrological conditions. Preliminary results show the promise of an object based approach. The vegetation change analyses are based on existing land cover mapping which defines the primary segments. The spectral information from remote sensing data is linked to these areas together with relevant supplementary data to identify the most robust measures of change. The main challenges are related to the extreme fragmentation of some landscapes which requires high resolution images, shadow from trees and alignment of the growth season with remote sensing data.