Forest canopy mortality during the 2018-2020 summer drought years in Central Europe: The application of a deep learning approach on aerial images across Luxembourg ...

Efficient monitoring of tree canopy mortality requires data that cover large areas and capture changes over time while being precise enough to detect changes at the canopy level. In the development of automated approaches, aerial images represent an under-exploited scale between high-resolution drone images and satellite data. Our aim herein was to use a deep learning model to automatically detect canopy mortality from high-resolution aerial images after severe drought events in the summers 2018–2020 in Luxembourg. We analysed canopy mortality for the years 2017–2020 using the EfficientUNet++,... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Schwarz, Selina
Werner, Christian
Fassnacht, Fabian Ewald
Ruehr, Nadine K.
Dokumenttyp: article-journal
Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
Verlag/Hrsg.: Freie Universität Berlin
Schlagwörter: tree canopy mortality / monitoring / deep learning / 500 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik::550 Geowissenschaften / Geologie::550 Geowissenschaften
Sprache: unknown
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-29102807
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : https://dx.doi.org/10.17169/refubium-41458

Efficient monitoring of tree canopy mortality requires data that cover large areas and capture changes over time while being precise enough to detect changes at the canopy level. In the development of automated approaches, aerial images represent an under-exploited scale between high-resolution drone images and satellite data. Our aim herein was to use a deep learning model to automatically detect canopy mortality from high-resolution aerial images after severe drought events in the summers 2018–2020 in Luxembourg. We analysed canopy mortality for the years 2017–2020 using the EfficientUNet++, a state-of-the-art convolutional neural network. Training data were acquired for the years 2017 and 2019 only, in order to test the robustness of the model for years with no reference data. We found a severe increase in canopy mortality from 0.64 km2 in 2017 to 7.49 km2 in 2020, with conifers being affected at a much higher rate than broadleaf trees. The model was able to classify canopy mortality with an F1-score of ...