Acta Agriculturae Zhejiangensis ›› 2021, Vol. 33 ›› Issue (8): 1505-1518.DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.1004-1524.2021.08.18

• Biosystems Engineering • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Determining tree species and crown width from unmanned aerial vehicle imagery in hilly loess region of west Shanxi, China: a case study from Caijiachuan watershed

WU Ningshan1,2(), WANG Jiaxi1,2, ZHANG Yan1,2,*(), YUAN Mutian1,2, ZHANG Qi1,2, GAO Chiyu1,2   

  1. 1. School of Soil and Water Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083,China
    2. Jixian Forest Ecosystem Studies, National Observation and Research Station, Beijing 100083,China).
  • Received:2021-01-14 Online:2021-08-25 Published:2021-08-27
  • Contact: ZHANG Yan

Abstract:

In the present study, Caijiachuan Watershed in the hilly loess region of west Shanxi was selected as the study area to examine the feasibility of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) remote sensing in extracting forest species and stand characteristics. The information of forest species and crown width were identified and extracted from visible images of UAV using the object-based nearest neighbor classification method, and the accuracy was evaluated by comparison with field investigation. The presented method was also used in the watershed level to investigate forest species and canopy characteristics in the farmland sub-watershed and plantation sub-watershed. The results showed that the Kappa coefficient of the confusion matrix for forest species classification was 0.898 and 0.728 in the farmland sub-watershed and in the plantation sub-watershed, respectively, suggesting higher accuracy under the condition of low canopy density than that under multiple vegetation types with high canopy density. According to the determination coefficient between the extracted and measured crown width, the accuracy of crown width extraction of planted forests and economic forest (R2>0.7) was higher than that of secondary forests (R2=0.422 3). Based on the UAV remote sensing and the presented method, it was found that the mixed forest of Robinia pseudoacacia L., Pinus tabulaeformis Carr. and Platycladus orientalis(L.) Franco was dominant, along with the economic forest, Malus domestica Borkh. in the plantation sub-watershed, as the stand density of Pinus tabulaeform was 1 744 hm -2, with the average crown width of 2.24 m, ad the stand density of Malus domestica was 382 hm -2 with the average crown width of 4.26 m. There were 912 Malus domestica, with a stand density of 439 hm -2 and an average crown width of 3.84 m in the farmland sub-watershed. These results indicated that the proposed method coupled with UAV remote sensing would improve the efficiency and increase the accuracy of forest resource surveys with the capability in forest species classification, tree number counting and crown width estimation.

Key words: object-oriented classification, tree species classification, canopy characteristics, unmanned aerial vehicle imagey, loess region

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