The creation of large-area forest stem volume maps of Northeast (~1,5
Million km²) and Southeast China (~3 Million km²), based on ERS-1/2
tandem coherence data, was the aim of the Forest DRAGON 1 project (Fig. 1). The
accuracy assessment of the map products is one of the objectives of the
ongoing Forest DRAGON 2 project. A reasonable agreement above 70%
between the forest stem volume map and the land cover datasets in terms
of forest/ nonforest could be achieved for both, Northeast and Southeast
China. Forest stem volume inventory data including >1100 point
measurements was available for a small test site in Northeast China. An
overall accuracy of 76% in terms of forest stem volume highlights the
high performance of the stem volume retrieval algorithm.