Abstract
Forest land has a vital role in our planet ecosystem health. Forest areas are under natural and human pressure worldwide. Pests may have irreparable damages to vegetation cover; Tortrix viridana is one of the most important pests in the western forests of Iran and is mainly hosted by oak trees. In this study the performance of Sentinel-2 images to detect infected oaks by T. viridana in the Zagros forest habitat was considered. Vegetation indices (VIs) were extracted from affected and non-affected areas by T. viridana. The indices indices included normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), soil-adjusted vegetation index (SAVI), infrared percentage vegetation index (IPVI) and inverted red-edge chlorophyll index (IRECI) which were extracted from Sentinel-2 satellite images. The results of the present study show that VIs in affected and non-affected areas of the study site have significant differences at 99% of confidence level. In addition, the Spearman’s correlation coefficients between the VIs values in the affected and non-affected were 0.213, 0.213, 0.168 and 0.121 for IPVI, NDVI, IRECI and SAVI, respectively. This shows that Sentinel-2 images can be used to detect pests in forest areas.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Farshad Haghighian
Conceptualization, F.H. and S.Y.; Data curation, F.H.; Formal analysis, S.Y., and S.K.; Investigation, F.H. and S.Y.; Methodology, S.Y., and S.K.; Resources, F.H.; Software, S.Y.
Saleh Yousefi
Conceptualization, F.H. and S.Y.; Data curation, F.H.; Formal analysis, S.Y., and S.K.; Investigation, F.H. and S.Y.; Methodology, S.Y., and S.K.; Resources, F.H.; Software, S.Y.
Saskia Keesstra
Conceptualization, F.H. and S.Y.; Data curation, F.H.; Formal analysis, S.Y., and S.K.; Investigation, F.H. and S.Y.; Methodology, S.Y., and S.K.; Resources, F.H.; Software, S.Y.