Climate change and rising temperatures have been observed to be related to the increase of forest insect damage in the boreal zone. The common pine sawfly (Diprion pini L.) (Hymenoptera, Diprionidae) is regarded as a significant threat to boreal pine forests. Defoliation by D. pini can cause severe growth loss and tree mortality in Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) (Pinaceae). In this study, logistic LASSO regression, Random Forest (RF) and Most Similar Neighbor method (MSN) were investigated for predicting the defoliation level of individual Scots pines using the features derived from airborne laser scanning (ALS) data and aerial images. Classification accuracies from 83.7% (kappa 0.67) to 88.1% (kappa 0.76) were obtained depending on the method. The most accurate result was produced using RF with a combination of data from the two sensors, while the accuracies when using ALS and image features separately were 80.7% and 87.4%, respectively. Evidently, the combination of ALS and aerial images in detecting needle losses is capable of providing satisfactory estimates for individual trees.

The intensity and frequency of insect outbreaks have increased in Finland in the last decades and they are expected to increase even further in the future due to global climate change. In 1998-2001 Finland suffered the most severe insect outbreak ever recorded, over 500,000 hectares. The outbreak was caused by the common pine sawfly (Diprion pini L.). The outbreak has continued in the study area, Palokangas, ever since. To find a good method to monitor this type of outbreaks, the purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of multitemporal ERS-2 and ENVISAT SAR imagery for estimating Scots pine defoliation. The study area, Palokangas, is located in Ilomantsi district, Eastern-Finland and consists mainly even-aged Scots pine forests on relatively dry soils. Most of the forests in the area are young or middle-aged managed forests. The study material was comprised of multi-temporal ERS-2 and ENVISAT synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data. The images had been taken between the years 2001 and 2008. The field data consisted 16 sample plots which had been measured seven times between the years 2002 and 2009. In addition, eight sample plots were added afterwards to places which were known to have had cuttings during the study period. Three methods were tested to estimate Scots pine defoliation: unsupervised k-means clustering, supervised linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and logistic regression. In addition, it was assessed if harvested areas could be differentiated from the defoliated forest using the same methods. Two different speckle filters were used to determine the effect of filtering on the SAR imagery and subsequent results. The logistic regression performed best, producing a classification accuracy of 81.6% (kappa 0.62) with two classes (no defoliation, >20% defoliation). LDA accuracy was with two classes at best 77.7% (kappa 0.54) and k-means 72.8 (0.46). In general, the largest speckle filter, 5 x 5 image window, performed best. When additional classes were added the accuracy was usually degraded on a step-by-step basis. The results were good, but because of the restrictions in the study they should be confirmed with independent data, before full conclusions can be made that results are reliable. The restrictions include the small size field data and, thus, the problems with accuracy assessment (no separate testing data) as well as the lack of meteorological data from the imaging dates.