In view of monitoring forest degradation in continental Southeast Asia the following conclusions may be drawn from
Section 3. First, due to the long historical human impact in the form of both selective logging and shifting cultivation,
accompanied with anthropogenic fire activity, it is difficult to identify areas of remaining intact forests and, consequently,to produce or agree on a single standard definition of what should be considered as non-degraded forest in this sub-region.
Second, large variation exists in the physical structure of natural forest types, ranging from evergreen and semi-evergreen
(with some seasonality) closed canopy forests to open canopy dry deciduous savanna type forests. The variation in physical
forest structure characteristics (e.g. canopy openness) caused by these two points may not be easily distinguished from the
effects caused by recent disturbances (e.g. selective logging or shifting cultivation). This potential confusion profoundly
affects the suitability of various remote sensing approaches for forest degradation monitoring in continental Southeast
Asia.