Plant identification using local invariants: dense sift approach

In this thesis, we investigate the use of Dense SIFT approach in automatic identification of plants from photographs. We concentrate on owering plants and evaluate three alternative approaches. In the first one, we classify the plant directly using the dense SIFT method, using appropriate parameters that are found using experimental validation techniques. In the second approach, we first identify the dominant colour in the photograph and use a separate classifier in each of the colour cluster. The second approach is intended to reduce the problem complexity and the number of classes handled by each classifier. In this approach, the classifier for red owers will not know about a plant that does not ower in red; furthermore a plant that is only observed with red owers will only be handled by that classifier. In a third approach, we precede the second approach by adding a Region of Interest detector, in order to extract the flower color more reliably. We find that enhancement of Dense SIFT features based identification is possible with saturation-weighted hue histogram based color clustering and region of interest detector. Using the proposed system, we obtain a 0:60 accuracy on the ower subset in the LifecLEF 2014 database

On the taxonomic resolution of pollen and spore records of Earth’s vegetation

Premise of research. Pollen and spores (sporomorphs) are a valuable record of plant life and have provided information on subjects ranging from the nature and timing of evolutionary events to the relationship between vegetation and climate. However, sporomorphs can be morphologically similar at the species, genus, or family level. Studies of extinct plant groups in pre-Quaternary time often include dispersed sporomorph taxa whose parent plant is known only to the class level. Consequently, sporomorph records of vegetation suffer from limited taxonomic resolution and typically record information about plant life at a taxonomic rank above species.Methodology. In this article, we review the causes of low taxonomic resolution, highlight examples where this has hampered the study of vegetation, and discuss the strategies researchers have developed to overcome the low taxonomic resolution of the sporomorph record. Based on this review, we offer our views on how greater taxonomic precision might be attained in future work. Pivotal results. Low taxonomic resolution results from a combination of several factors, including inadequate reference collections, the absence of sporomorphs in situ in fossilized reproductive structures, and damage following fossilization. A primary cause is the difficulty of accurately describing the very small morphological differences between species using descriptive terminology, which results in palynologists classifying sporomorphs conservatively at the genus or family level to ensure that classifications are reproducible between samples and between researchers. Conclusions. In our view, the most promising approach to the problem of low taxonomic resolution is a combination of high-resolution imaging and computational image analysis. In particular, we encourage palynologists to explore the utility of microscopy techniques that aim to recover morphological information from below the diffraction limit of light and to employ computational image analyses to consistently quantify small morphological differences between species

A Model of Plant Identification System Using GLCM, Lacunarity And Shen Features

Recently, many approaches have been introduced by several researchers to identify plants. Now, applications of texture, shape, color and vein features are common practices. However, there are many possibilities of methods can be developed to improve the performance of such identification systems. Therefore, several experiments had been conducted in this research. As a result, a new novel approach by using combination of Gray-Level Co-occurrence Matrix, lacunarity and Shen features and a Bayesian classifier gives a better result compared to other plant identification systems. For comparison, this research used two kinds of several datasets that were usually used for testing the performance of each plant identification system. The results show that the system gives an accuracy rate of 97.19% when using the Flavia dataset and 95.00% when using the Foliage dataset and outperforms other approaches.Comment: 10 page

BeSpaceD: Towards a Tool Framework and Methodology for the Specification and Verification of Spatial Behavior of Distributed Software Component Systems

In this report, we present work towards a framework for modeling and checking behavior of spatially distributed component systems. Design goals of our framework are the ability to model spatial behavior in a component oriented, simple and intuitive way, the possibility to automatically analyse and verify systems and integration possibilities with other modeling and verification tools. We present examples and the verification steps necessary to prove properties such as range coverage or the absence of collisions between components and technical details

Estimation of leaf area index and its sunlit portion from DSCOVR EPIC data: theoretical basis

This paper presents the theoretical basis of the algorithm designed for the generation of leaf area index and diurnal course of its sunlit portion from NASA's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) onboard NOAA's Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR). The Look-up-Table (LUT) approach implemented in the MODIS operational LAI/FPAR algorithm is adopted. The LUT, which is the heart of the approach, has been significantly modified. First, its parameterization incorporates the canopy hot spot phenomenon and recent advances in the theory of canopy spectral invariants. This allows more accurate decoupling of the structural and radiometric components of the measured Bidirectional Reflectance Factor (BRF), improves scaling properties of the LUT and consequently simplifies adjustments of the algorithm for data spatial resolution and spectral band compositions. Second, the stochastic radiative transfer equations are used to generate the LUT for all biome types. The equations naturally account for radiative effects of the three-dimensional canopy structure on the BRF and allow for an accurate discrimination between sunlit and shaded leaf areas. Third, the LUT entries are measurable, i.e., they can be independently derived from both below canopy measurements of the transmitted and above canopy measurements of reflected radiation fields. This feature makes possible direct validation of the LUT, facilitates identification of its deficiencies and development of refinements. Analyses of field data on canopy structure and leaf optics collected at 18 sites in the Hyytiälä forest in southern boreal zone in Finland and hyperspectral images acquired by the EO-1 Hyperion sensor support the theoretical basis.Shared Services Center NAS

Native ultrametricity of sparse random ensembles

We investigate the eigenvalue density in ensembles of large sparse Bernoulli random matrices. We demonstrate that the fraction of linear subgraphs just below the percolation threshold is about 95\% of all finite subgraphs, and the distribution of linear chains is purely exponential. We analyze in detail the spectral density of ensembles of linear subgraphs, discuss its ultrametric nature and show that near the spectrum boundary, the tail of the spectral density exhibits a Lifshitz singularity typical for Anderson localization. We also discuss an intriguing connection of the spectral density to the Dedekind $\eta$-function. We conjecture that ultrametricity is inherit to complex systems with extremal sparse statistics and argue that a number-theoretic ultrametricity emerges in any rare-event statistics.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figure