While small, fragmented wooded elements do not represent a large surface area in
agricultural landscape, their role in the sustainability of ecological processes is
recognized widely. Unfortunately, landscape ecology studies suffer from the lack
of methods for automatic detection of these elements. We propose a hybrid
approach using both aerial photographs and ancillary data of coarser resolution
to automatically discriminate small wooded elements. First, a spectral and textural
analysis is performed to identify all the planted-tree areas in the digital photograph.
Secondly, an object-orientated spatial analysis using the two data sources
and including a multi-resolution segmentation is applied to distinguish between
large and small woods, copses, hedgerows and scattered trees. The results show the
usefulness of the hybrid approach and the prospects for future ecological
applications