Tree species classification using deep learning and RGB optical images obtained by an unmanned aerial vehicle

The diversity of tree species and the complexity of land use in cities create challenging issues for tree species classification.The combination of deep learning methods and RGB optical images obtained by unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs) provides a new research direction for urban tree species classification.We proposed an RGB optical image dataset with 10 urban tree species,termed TCC10,which is a benchmark for tree canopy classification(TCC).TCC10 dataset contains two types of data:tree canopy images with simple backgrounds and those with complex backgrounds.The objective was to examine the possibility of using deep learning methods(AlexNet,VGG-16,and ResNet-50) for individual tree species classification.The results of convolutional neural networks(CNNs) were compared with those of K-nearest neighbor(KNN) and BP neural network.Our results demonstrated:(1) ResNet-50 achieved an overall accuracy(OA) of 92.6% and a kappa coefficient of 0.91 for tree species classification on TCC10 and outperformed AlexNet and VGG-16.(2) The classification accuracy of KNN and BP neural network was less than70%,while the accuracy of CNNs was relatively higher.(3)The classification accuracy of tree canopy images with complex backgrounds was lower than that for images with simple backgrounds.For the deciduous tree species in TCC10,the classification accuracy of ResNet-50 was higher in summer than that in autumn.Therefore,the deep learning is effective for urban tree species classification using RGB optical images.

Tree species classification in an extensive forest area using airborne hyperspectral data under varying light conditions

Although airborne hyperspectral data with detailed spatial and spectral information has demonstrated significant potential for tree species classification,it has not been widely used over large areas.A comprehensive process based on multi-flightline airborne hyperspectral data is lacking over large,forested areas influenced by both the effects of bidirectional reflectance distribution function(BRDF)and cloud shadow contamination.In this study,hyperspectral data were collected over the Mengjiagang Forest Farm in Northeast China in the summer of 2017 using the Chinese Academy of Forestry's LiDAR,CCD,and hyperspectral systems(CAF-LiCHy).After BRDF correction and cloud shadow detection processing,a tree species classification workflow was developed for sunlit and cloud-shaded forest areas with input features of minimum noise fraction reduced bands,spectral vegetation indices,and texture information.Results indicate that BRDF-corrected sunlit hyperspectral data can provide a stable and high classification accuracy based on representative training data.Cloud-shaded pixels also have good spectral separability for species classification.The red-edge spectral information and ratio-based spectral indices with high importance scores are recommended as input features for species classification under varying light conditions.According to the classification accuracies through field survey data at multiple spatial scales,it was found that species classification within an extensive forest area using airborne hyperspectral data under various illuminations can be successfully carried out using the effective radiometric consistency process and feature selection strategy.

An Improved Transfer-Learning for Image-Based Species Classification of Protected Indonesians Birds

This research proposed an improved transfer-learning bird classification framework to achieve a more precise classification of Protected Indonesia Birds(PIB)which have been identified as the endangered bird species.The framework takes advantage of using the proposed sequence of Batch Normalization Dropout Fully-Connected(BNDFC)layers to enhance the baseline model of transfer learning.The main contribution of this work is the proposed sequence of BNDFC that can be applied to any Convolutional Neural Network(CNN)based model to improve the classification accuracy,especially for image-based species classification problems.The experiment results show that the proposed sequence of BNDFC layers outperform other combination of BNDFC.The addition of BNDFC can improve the model’s performance across ten different CNN-based models.On average,BNDFC can improve by approximately 19.88%in Accuracy,24.43%in F-measure,17.93%in G-mean,23.41%in Sensitivity,and 18.76%in Precision.Moreover,applying fine-tuning(FT)is able to enhance the accuracy by 0.85%with a smaller validation loss of 18.33%improvement.In addition,MobileNetV2 was observed to be the best baseline model with the lightest size of 35.9 MB and the highest accuracy of 88.07%in the validation set.

Unmanned aerial vehicles(UAV)for assessment of qualitative classification of Norway spruce in temperate forest stands

The study investigates the potential of UAV-based remote sensing technique for monitoring of Norway spruce health condition in the affected forest areas.The objectives are:(1)to test the applicability of UAV visible an near-infrared(VNIR)and geometrical data based on Z values of point dense cloud(PDC)raster to separate forest species and dead trees in the study area;(2)to explore the relationship between UAV VNIR data and individual spruce health indicators from field sampling;and(3)to explore the possibility of the qualitative classification of spruce health indicators.Analysis based on NDVI and PDC raster was successfully applied for separation of spruce and silver fir,and for identification of dead tree category.Separation between common beech and fir was distinguished by the object-oriented image analysis.NDVI was able to identify the presence of key indicators of spruce health,such as mechanical damage on stems and stem resin exudation linked to honey fungus infestation,while stem damage by peeling was identified at the significance margin.The results contributed to improving separation of coniferous(spruce and fir)tree species based on VNIR and PDC raster UAV data,and newly demonstrated the potential of NDVI for qualitative classification of spruce trees.The proposed methodology can be applicable for monitoring of spruce health condition in the local forest sites.