10,265 research outputs found
Mapping and classification of ecologically sensitive marine habitats using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery and object-based image analysis (OBIA)
Nowadays, emerging technologies, such as long-range transmitters, increasingly miniaturized components for positioning, and enhanced imaging sensors, have led to an upsurge in the availability of new ecological applications for remote sensing based on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), sometimes referred to as “drones”. In fact, structure-from-motion (SfM) photogrammetry coupled with imagery acquired by UAVs offers a rapid and inexpensive tool to produce high-resolution orthomosaics, giving ecologists a new way for responsive, timely, and cost-effective monitoring of ecological processes. Here, we adopted a lightweight quadcopter as an aerial survey tool and object-based image analysis (OBIA) workflow to demonstrate the strength of such methods in producing very high spatial resolution maps of sensitive marine habitats. Therefore, three different coastal environments were mapped using the autonomous flight capability of a lightweight UAV equipped with a fully stabilized consumer-grade RGB digital camera. In particular we investigated a Posidonia oceanica seagrass meadow, a rocky coast with nurseries for juvenile fish, and two sandy areas showing biogenic reefs of Sabelleria alveolata. We adopted, for the first time, UAV-based raster thematic maps of these key coastal habitats, produced after OBIA classification, as a new method for fine-scale, low-cost, and time saving characterization of sensitive marine environments which may lead to a more effective and efficient monitoring and management of natural resource
Deep learning in remote sensing: a review
Standing at the paradigm shift towards data-intensive science, machine
learning techniques are becoming increasingly important. In particular, as a
major breakthrough in the field, deep learning has proven as an extremely
powerful tool in many fields. Shall we embrace deep learning as the key to all?
Or, should we resist a 'black-box' solution? There are controversial opinions
in the remote sensing community. In this article, we analyze the challenges of
using deep learning for remote sensing data analysis, review the recent
advances, and provide resources to make deep learning in remote sensing
ridiculously simple to start with. More importantly, we advocate remote sensing
scientists to bring their expertise into deep learning, and use it as an
implicit general model to tackle unprecedented large-scale influential
challenges, such as climate change and urbanization.Comment: Accepted for publication IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazin
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in environmental biology: A Review
Acquiring information about the environment is a key step during each study in the field of environmental biology at different levels, from an individual species to community and biome. However, obtaining information about the environment is frequently difficult because of, for example, the phenological timing, spatial distribution of a species or limited accessibility of a particular area for the field survey. Moreover, remote sensing technology, which enables the observation of the Earth’s surface and is currently very common in environmental research, has many limitations such as insufficient spatial, spectral and temporal resolution and a high cost of data acquisition. Since the 1990s, researchers have been exploring the potential of different types of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for monitoring Earth’s surface. The present study reviews recent scientific literature dealing with the use of UAV in environmental biology. Amongst numerous papers, short communications and conference abstracts, we selected 110 original studies of how UAVs can be used in environmental biology and which organisms can be studied in this manner. Most of these studies concerned the use of UAV to measure the vegetation parameters such as crown height, volume, number of individuals (14 studies) and quantification of the spatio-temporal dynamics of vegetation changes (12 studies). UAVs were also frequently applied to count birds and mammals, especially those living in the water. Generally, the analytical part of the present study was divided into following sections: (1) detecting, assessing and predicting threats on vegetation, (2) measuring the biophysical parameters of vegetation, (3) quantifying the dynamics of changes in plants and habitats and (4) population and behaviour studies of animals. At the end, we also synthesised all the information showing, amongst others, the advances in environmental biology because of UAV application. Considering that 33% of studies found and included in this review were published in 2017 and 2018, it is expected that the number and variety of applications of UAVs in environmental biology will increase in the future
A Comprehensive Survey of Deep Learning in Remote Sensing: Theories, Tools and Challenges for the Community
In recent years, deep learning (DL), a re-branding of neural networks (NNs),
has risen to the top in numerous areas, namely computer vision (CV), speech
recognition, natural language processing, etc. Whereas remote sensing (RS)
possesses a number of unique challenges, primarily related to sensors and
applications, inevitably RS draws from many of the same theories as CV; e.g.,
statistics, fusion, and machine learning, to name a few. This means that the RS
community should be aware of, if not at the leading edge of, of advancements
like DL. Herein, we provide the most comprehensive survey of state-of-the-art
RS DL research. We also review recent new developments in the DL field that can
be used in DL for RS. Namely, we focus on theories, tools and challenges for
the RS community. Specifically, we focus on unsolved challenges and
opportunities as it relates to (i) inadequate data sets, (ii)
human-understandable solutions for modelling physical phenomena, (iii) Big
Data, (iv) non-traditional heterogeneous data sources, (v) DL architectures and
learning algorithms for spectral, spatial and temporal data, (vi) transfer
learning, (vii) an improved theoretical understanding of DL systems, (viii)
high barriers to entry, and (ix) training and optimizing the DL.Comment: 64 pages, 411 references. To appear in Journal of Applied Remote
Sensin
A Comparative Analysis of Phytovolume Estimation Methods Based on UAV-Photogrammetry and Multispectral Imagery in a Mediterranean Forest
Management and control operations are crucial for preventing forest fires, especially in Mediterranean forest areas with dry climatic periods. One of them is prescribed fires, in which the biomass fuel present in the controlled plot area must be accurately estimated. The most used methods for estimating biomass are time-consuming and demand too much manpower. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) carrying multispectral sensors can be used to carry out accurate indirect measurements of terrain and vegetation morphology and their radiometric characteristics. Based on the UAV-photogrammetric project products, four estimators of phytovolume were compared in a Mediterranean forest area, all obtained using the difference between a digital surface model (DSM) and a digital terrain model (DTM). The DSM was derived from a UAV-photogrammetric project based on the structure from a motion algorithm. Four different methods for obtaining a DTM were used based on an unclassified dense point cloud produced through a UAV-photogrammetric project (FFU), an unsupervised classified dense point cloud (FFC), a multispectral vegetation index (FMI), and a cloth simulation filter (FCS). Qualitative and quantitative comparisons determined the ability of the phytovolume estimators for vegetation detection and occupied volume. The results show that there are no significant differences in surface vegetation detection between all the pairwise possible comparisons of the four estimators at a 95% confidence level, but FMI presented the best kappa value (0.678) in an error matrix analysis with reference data obtained from photointerpretation and supervised classification. Concerning the accuracy of phytovolume estimation, only FFU and FFC presented differences higher than two standard deviations in a pairwise comparison, and FMI presented the best RMSE (12.3 m) when the estimators were compared to 768 observed data points grouped in four 500 m2 sample plots. The FMI was the best phytovolume estimator of the four compared for low vegetation height in a Mediterranean forest. The use of FMI based on UAV data provides accurate phytovolume estimations that can be applied on several environment management activities, including wildfire prevention. Multitemporal phytovolume estimations based on FMI could help to model the forest resources evolution in a very realistic way
SpaceNet MVOI: a Multi-View Overhead Imagery Dataset
Detection and segmentation of objects in overheard imagery is a challenging
task. The variable density, random orientation, small size, and
instance-to-instance heterogeneity of objects in overhead imagery calls for
approaches distinct from existing models designed for natural scene datasets.
Though new overhead imagery datasets are being developed, they almost
universally comprise a single view taken from directly overhead ("at nadir"),
failing to address a critical variable: look angle. By contrast, views vary in
real-world overhead imagery, particularly in dynamic scenarios such as natural
disasters where first looks are often over 40 degrees off-nadir. This
represents an important challenge to computer vision methods, as changing view
angle adds distortions, alters resolution, and changes lighting. At present,
the impact of these perturbations for algorithmic detection and segmentation of
objects is untested. To address this problem, we present an open source
Multi-View Overhead Imagery dataset, termed SpaceNet MVOI, with 27 unique looks
from a broad range of viewing angles (-32.5 degrees to 54.0 degrees). Each of
these images cover the same 665 square km geographic extent and are annotated
with 126,747 building footprint labels, enabling direct assessment of the
impact of viewpoint perturbation on model performance. We benchmark multiple
leading segmentation and object detection models on: (1) building detection,
(2) generalization to unseen viewing angles and resolutions, and (3)
sensitivity of building footprint extraction to changes in resolution. We find
that state of the art segmentation and object detection models struggle to
identify buildings in off-nadir imagery and generalize poorly to unseen views,
presenting an important benchmark to explore the broadly relevant challenge of
detecting small, heterogeneous target objects in visually dynamic contexts.Comment: Accepted into IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV)
201
Predicting growing stock volume of Eucalyptus plantations using 3-D point clouds derived from UAV imagery and ALS data
Estimating forest inventory variables is important in monitoring forest resources and
mitigating climate change. In this respect, forest managers require flexible, non-destructive methods
for estimating volume and biomass. High-resolution and low-cost remote sensing data are increasingly
available to measure three-dimensional (3D) canopy structure and to model forest structural attributes.
The main objective of this study was to evaluate and compare the individual tree volume estimates
derived from high-density point clouds obtained from airborne laser scanning (ALS) and digital
aerial photogrammetry (DAP) in Eucalyptus spp. plantations. Object-based image analysis (OBIA)
techniques were applied for individual tree crown (ITC) delineation. The ITC algorithm applied
correctly detected and delineated 199 trees from ALS-derived data, while 192 trees were correctly
identified using DAP-based point clouds acquired fromUnmannedAerialVehicles(UAV), representing
accuracy levels of respectively 62% and 60%. Addressing volume modelling, non-linear regression
fit based on individual tree height and individual crown area derived from the ITC provided the
following results: Model E ciency (Mef) = 0.43 and 0.46, Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) = 0.030 m3
and 0.026 m3, rRMSE = 20.31% and 19.97%, and an approximately unbiased results (0.025 m3 and
0.0004 m3) using DAP and ALS-based estimations, respectively. No significant di erence was found
between the observed value (field data) and volume estimation from ALS and DAP (p-value from
t-test statistic = 0.99 and 0.98, respectively). The proposed approaches could also be used to estimate
basal area or biomass stocks in Eucalyptus spp. plantationsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
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