Monitoring Oil Palm Plantations using Synthetic Aperture Radar to Support Sustainability

UTM Campus with palm oil plantation shown with the ‘eyes’ of an optical and a radar sensor
(left: WorldView-2; courtesy of DigitalGlobe, USA; right: airborne SAR; courtesy of Intermap Technologies, Canada)

Palm oil has become the most popular vegetable oil on the global market. Looking at the list of palm oil producers, Malaysia scores second on the world market stated for 2013 by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations. Only Indonesia produces more: 23,672,000 metric tons compared to Malaysia with 18,785,000 metric tons in 2012. The Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) states that 5,000,109 hectares of oil palms covered the land of Malaysia in 2011; this means a 3% increase compared to 2011. This constitutes about 16% of the 32.86 million hectares total land mass of Malaysia.

There are various factors that impact the environment in the production of palm oil. First of all the large-scale conversion of natural tropical forest into plantation is a well-known phenomena influencing effects in climate change, emission of green house gases (GHG) and biodiversity reduction due to the loss of critical habitats for endangered species. Others include soil erosion, air pollution, soil and water pollution, again with an effect on regional and global climate change.

This research headed by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christine Pohl aims at investigating the benefits of using satellite remote sensing, i.e. synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data to monitor palm oil plantations. The first step is to conduct a feasibility study to understand which parameters that are relevant to a sustainable palm oil plantation management can be derived from SAR data. For a proper, successful and sustainable oil palm plantation management it is necessary to monitor the plantation on a regular basis.
From preparing the ground, through planting the trees, growing the trees plus their accompanying plants to prevent erosion etc., to nutrition and health status of the trees plus yield prediction there is a palm tree life long process to be managed. Therefore, the plantation owner needs regular and continuous access to a set of parameters that are vital to take decisions about fertilizer, pest control, soil moisture regulation, environmental impact, water quality, yield, etc.

Prof. Christine exploits the use of active microwave remote sensing. The advantage of using radar is its independence from daylight and weather conditions. It can provide data around the clock all year long in a timely manner. It will be investigated which parameters that are of interest to oil palm plantation management can be provided by satellite SAR. In order to conduct this feasibility study it is necessary to exploit multisensory satellite data. SAR data alone will not be suitable to extract and validate the observation parameters needed. Therefore, a set of optical and radar images will be used in an integrated approach. Based on the findings it will be possible to provide an overview on the achievements that are possible, producing the results in two steps: 1. Multisensor approach, and based on this, 2. Feasible SAR stand-alone solutions.

Reference:

1. Pohl, C. (2014): “Mapping palm oil expansion using SAR to study the impact on the CO2 cycle” 7th IGRSM International Conference, 21-22 April 2014, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, IOP Earth & Environmental Science, 8 pages, in press.