High resolution satellite images for environmental monitoring of oil production in Western Amazon: the case of Yasuní National Park

Direct and indirect ecological impacts of roads and their expansion are well documented: habitat degradation, ecosystem fragmentation, changes in natural drainage systems and water quality. Important landscape scale impacts concern roads about direct and indirect effects on deforestation and land use land cover change, that lead to habitat loss and fragmentation, edge effect, resources exploitation and changes in social behaviour like the increase of human invasion and social conflicts. The general aim of this study is to extract and to ecologically assess a new road track within the Yasuní National Park, one of the most biodiverse area on Planet, using very high resolution satellite images; specific aims are to quantify and to validate road track clearance, according different methodologies. Results show that combining different methodologies such as supervised and unsupervised classifications (NDVI and ISODATA) allow to cross validate features extraction of road track. However, display analysis seems to be the most powerful tool for feature interpretation of anthropic features in tropical forest.