scholarly journals Identifying Vegetation in Arid Regions Using Object-Based Image Analysis with RGB-Only Aerial Imagery

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (19) ◽  
pp. 2308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Micha Silver ◽  
Arti Tiwari ◽  
Arnon Karnieli

Vegetation state is usually assessed by calculating vegetation indices (VIs) derived from remote sensing systems where the near infrared (NIR) band is used to enhance the vegetation signal. However VIs are pixel-based and require both visible and NIR bands. Yet, most archived photographs were obtained with cameras that record only the three visible bands. Attempts to construct VIs with the visible bands alone have shown only limited success, especially in drylands. The current study identifies vegetation patches in the hyperarid Israeli desert using only the visible bands from aerial photographs by adapting an alternative geospatial object-based image analysis (GEOBIA) routine, together with recent improvements in preprocessing. The preprocessing step selects a balanced threshold value for image segmentation using unsupervised parameter optimization. Then the images undergo two processes: segmentation and classification. After tallying modeled vegetation patches that overlap true tree locations, both true positive and false positive rates are obtained from the classification and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves are plotted. The results show successful identification of vegetation patches in multiple zones from each study area, with area under the ROC curve values between 0.72 and 0.83.

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (22) ◽  
pp. 2649 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilio Guirado ◽  
Javier Blanco-Sacristán ◽  
Juan Rigol-Sánchez ◽  
Domingo Alcaraz-Segura ◽  
Javier Cabello

Climate change and human actions condition the spatial distribution and structure of vegetation, especially in drylands. In this context, object-based image analysis (OBIA) has been used to monitor changes in vegetation, but only a few studies have related them to anthropic pressure. In this study, we assessed changes in cover, number, and shape of Ziziphus lotus shrub individuals in a coastal groundwater-dependent ecosystem in SE Spain over a period of 60 years and related them to human actions in the area. In particular, we evaluated how sand mining, groundwater extraction, and the protection of the area affect shrubs. To do this, we developed an object-based methodology that allowed us to create accurate maps (overall accuracy up to 98%) of the vegetation patches and compare the cover changes in the individuals identified in them. These changes in shrub size and shape were related to soil loss, seawater intrusion, and legal protection of the area measured by average minimum distance (AMD) and average random distance (ARD) analysis. It was found that both sand mining and seawater intrusion had a negative effect on individuals; on the contrary, the protection of the area had a positive effect on the size of the individuals’ coverage. Our findings support the use of OBIA as a successful methodology for monitoring scattered vegetation patches in drylands, key to any monitoring program aimed at vegetation preservation.


2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (10) ◽  
pp. 1823-1836 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karolina Korzeniowska ◽  
Yves Bühler ◽  
Mauro Marty ◽  
Oliver Korup

Abstract. Snow avalanches are destructive mass movements in mountain regions that continue to claim lives and cause infrastructural damage and traffic detours. Given that avalanches often occur in remote and poorly accessible steep terrain, their detection and mapping is extensive and time consuming. Nonetheless, systematic avalanche detection over large areas could help to generate more complete and up-to-date inventories (cadastres) necessary for validating avalanche forecasting and hazard mapping. In this study, we focused on automatically detecting avalanches and classifying them into release zones, tracks, and run-out zones based on 0.25 m near-infrared (NIR) ADS80-SH92 aerial imagery using an object-based image analysis (OBIA) approach. Our algorithm takes into account the brightness, the normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI), the normalised difference water index (NDWI), and its standard deviation (SDNDWI) to distinguish avalanches from other land-surface elements. Using normalised parameters allows applying this method across large areas. We trained the method by analysing the properties of snow avalanches at three 4 km−2 areas near Davos, Switzerland. We compared the results with manually mapped avalanche polygons and obtained a user's accuracy of > 0.9 and a Cohen's kappa of 0.79–0.85. Testing the method for a larger area of 226.3 km−2, we estimated producer's and user's accuracies of 0.61 and 0.78, respectively, with a Cohen's kappa of 0.67. Detected avalanches that overlapped with reference data by > 80 % occurred randomly throughout the testing area, showing that our method avoids overfitting. Our method has potential for large-scale avalanche mapping, although further investigations into other regions are desirable to verify the robustness of our selected thresholds and the transferability of the method.


Author(s):  
R. Comert ◽  
U. Avdan ◽  
T. Gorum

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> The Black Sea Region is one of the most landslide prone area due to the high slope gradients, heavy rainfall and highly weathered hillslope material conditions in Turkey. The landslide occurrences in this region are mainly controlled by the hydro-climatic conditions and anthropogenic activities. Rapid regional landslide inventory mapping after a major event is main difficulties encountered in this densely vegetated region. However, landslide inventories are first step and necessary for susceptibility assessment since considering the principle that the past is the key to the future thus, future landslides will be more likely to occur under similar conditions, which have led to past and present instability. In this respect, it is important to apply rapid mapping techniques to create regional landslide inventory maps of the area. This study presents the preliminary results of the semi-automated mapping of landslides from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) with object-based image analysis (OBIA) approach. Within the scope of the study, ultra-high resolution aerial photographs were taken with fixed wing UAV system on Aug 17, 2017 in the landslide zones which are triggered by the prolonged heavy rainfall event on August 12&amp;ndash;13, 2016 at Bartın Kurucaşile province. 10&amp;thinsp;cm resolution orthomosaic and Digital Surface Model (DSM) data of the area were produced by processing the obtained photographs. A test area was selected from the overall research area and semi-automatic landslide detection was performed by applying object-based image analysis. OBIA has been implemented in three steps: image segmentation, image object metric calculation and classification. The accuracy of the resulting maps is assessed by comparisons with expert based landslide inventory map of the area. As a result of the comparison, 80&amp;thinsp;% of the 240 landslides in the area were detected correctly.</p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (8) ◽  
pp. 294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominique Chabot ◽  
Christopher Dillon ◽  
Adam Shemrock ◽  
Nicholas Weissflog ◽  
Eric Sager

High-resolution drone aerial surveys combined with object-based image analysis are transforming our capacity to monitor and manage aquatic vegetation in an era of invasive species. To better exploit the potential of these technologies, there is a need to develop more efficient and accessible analysis workflows and focus more efforts on the distinct challenge of mapping submerged vegetation. We present a straightforward workflow developed to monitor emergent and submerged invasive water soldier (Stratiotes aloides) in shallow waters of the Trent-Severn Waterway in Ontario, Canada. The main elements of the workflow are: (1) collection of radiometrically calibrated multispectral imagery including a near-infrared band; (2) multistage segmentation of the imagery involving an initial separation of above-water from submerged features; and (3) automated classification of features with a supervised machine-learning classifier. The approach yielded excellent classification accuracy for emergent features (overall accuracy = 92%; kappa = 88%; water soldier producer’s accuracy = 92%; user’s accuracy = 91%) and good accuracy for submerged features (overall accuracy = 84%; kappa = 75%; water soldier producer’s accuracy = 71%; user’s accuracy = 84%). The workflow employs off-the-shelf graphical software tools requiring no programming or coding, and could therefore be used by anyone with basic GIS and image analysis skills for a potentially wide variety of aquatic vegetation monitoring operations.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karolina Korzeniowska ◽  
Yves Bühler ◽  
Mauro Marty ◽  
Oliver Korup

Abstract. Snow avalanches are destructive natural hazards in mountain regions that continue to claim lives, and cause infrastructural damage and traffic detours. Given that avalanches often occur in remote and poorly-accessible steep terrain, their detection and mapping is extensive and time consuming. Nonetheless, systematic avalanche detection over large areas could help to generate more complete and up-to-date inventories (cadastres) necessary for validating avalanche forecasting and hazard mapping. In this study, we have focused on automatically detecting avalanches and classifying them into release zones, tracks, and runout zones based on 0.25-m near-infrared (NIR) ADS80-SH92 aerial imagery using an object-based image analysis (OBIA) approach. Our algorithm takes into account the brightness, the normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI), and the normalised difference water index (NDWI) and its standard deviation (SDNDWI) in order to distinguish avalanches from other land-surface elements. Using normalised parameters allows readily applying this method across large areas. We trained the method by analysing the properties of snow avalanches at three 4-km2 areas near Davos, Switzerland. We compared the results with manually-mapped avalanche polygons, and obtained a user's accuracy of > 0.9 and a Cohen's kappa of 0.79–0.85. Testing the method for a larger area of 226.3 km2, we estimated producer's and user's accuracies of 0.61 and 0.78, respectively, with a Cohen's kappa of 0.67. Detected avalanches that overlapped with reference data by > 80 % occurred randomly throughout the testing area, showing that our method avoids overfitting. Our method shows potential in large-scale avalanche mapping, although further investigations into other regions are desirable to verify the stability of our selected thresholds and the transferability of the method.


2021 ◽  
Vol 193 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Oldeland ◽  
Rasmus Revermann ◽  
Jona Luther-Mosebach ◽  
Tillmann Buttschardt ◽  
Jan R. K. Lehmann

AbstractPlant species that negatively affect their environment by encroachment require constant management and monitoring through field surveys. Drones have been suggested to support field surveyors allowing more accurate mapping with just-in-time aerial imagery. Furthermore, object-based image analysis tools could increase the accuracy of species maps. However, only few studies compare species distribution maps resulting from traditional field surveys and object-based image analysis using drone imagery. We acquired drone imagery for a saltmarsh area (18 ha) on the Hallig Nordstrandischmoor (Germany) with patches of Elymus athericus, a tall grass which encroaches higher parts of saltmarshes. A field survey was conducted afterwards using the drone orthoimagery as a baseline. We used object-based image analysis (OBIA) to segment CIR imagery into polygons which were classified into eight land cover classes. Finally, we compared polygons of the field-based and OBIA-based maps visually and for location, area, and overlap before and after post-processing. OBIA-based classification yielded good results (kappa = 0.937) and agreed in general with the field-based maps (field = 6.29 ha, drone = 6.22 ha with E. athericus dominance). Post-processing revealed 0.31 ha of misclassified polygons, which were often related to water runnels or shadows, leaving 5.91 ha of E. athericus cover. Overlap of both polygon maps was only 70% resulting from many small patches identified where E. athericus was absent. In sum, drones can greatly support field surveys in monitoring of plant species by allowing for accurate species maps and just-in-time captured very-high-resolution imagery.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 830
Author(s):  
Adam R. Benjamin ◽  
Amr Abd-Elrahman ◽  
Lyn A. Gettys ◽  
Hartwig H. Hochmair ◽  
Kyle Thayer

This study investigates the use of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) mapping for monitoring the efficacy of invasive aquatic vegetation (AV) management on a floating-leaved AV species, Nymphoides cristata (CFH). The study site consists of 48 treatment plots (TPs). Based on six unique flights over two days at three different flight altitudes while using both a multispectral and RGB sensor, accuracy assessment of the final object-based image analysis (OBIA)-derived classified images yielded overall accuracies ranging from 89.6% to 95.4%. The multispectral sensor was significantly more accurate than the RGB sensor at measuring CFH areal coverage within each TP only with the highest multispectral, spatial resolution (2.7 cm/pix at 40 m altitude). When measuring response in the AV community area between the day of treatment and two weeks after treatment, there was no significant difference between the temporal area change from the reference datasets and the area changes derived from either the RGB or multispectral sensor. Thus, water resource managers need to weigh small gains in accuracy from using multispectral sensors against other operational considerations such as the additional processing time due to increased file sizes, higher financial costs for equipment procurements, and longer flight durations in the field when operating multispectral sensors.


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