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Ultra-high-resolution aerial images obtained from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have widely been used to extract crop planting information in recent years. However, some high-resolution multispectral or hyperspectral images were usually costly and time-consuming for data processing. Therefore, it is very necessary to effectively use easily accessible and low-cost high-resolution RGB images, particularly to eliminate the common noises (e.g., shadows and bare land) for a better extraction accuracy of crop planting. In this study, a high-precision extraction method was proposed to obtain the maize planting information using 1.8 cm resolution UAV aerial orthophotos (i.e., RGB images). The experimental maize farm was located in Southeast Africa, where images were taken at noon during the maize growing season. The classification features were also selected from the aspects of the spectrum, color space, and image texture. Then, five types of classification were selected to extract maize planting information, including Bayes, K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Decision Tree (DT), and Random Forest (RF) algorithms). Firstly, an object-oriented interpreting platform (eCognition9.0 software) was selected to calculate the space transform of Hue, Saturation, and Intensity (HSI) color, eight types of RGB texture, and five vegetation indices, including the normalized green-red difference index, red-green ratio index, vegetation color verification index, visible-band difference vegetation index, and excess green vegetation index. Then, three types of feature space were constructed: 1) The first feature space was composed of three sub-feature spaces, i.e., vegetation indices, HSI color space features, and RGB image texture features; 2) The second feature space was composed of four sub-feature spaces, where three types of features were combined (i.e., vegetation indices, HSI color space, and RGB image texture) in pairs or total; 3) The third feature space was composed of the most optimal factors, where the dimension reduction was performed on the combination of all three types of features using RF. Subsequently, the RGB images were classified into three land-use types, including maize, bare land, and shadow. Bayes, KNN, SVM, DT, and RFs models were finally selected for the supervised classification with error matrix. The results showed that the optimal classification accuracy was obtained using neither a single feature nor all three types of features in total. More importantly, a combination of features was usually achieved higher accuracy than that of a single feature. Specifically, the best choice was the combination of HSI color and RGB image texture features using the RF, particularly with the total highest accuracy of 0.862 and a Kappa coefficient of 0.793. Additionally, the dimension reduction of features using RF models was neither significantly improved nor reduced classification accuracy (except for the SVM). However, the factors retained from the feature dimension reduction were easily explained suitable for the actual background and meaning. Furthermore, both classification efficiency and stability were improved greatly during this time. The finding can provide a specific solution for the high-precision extraction of crop planting information using UAV RGB images [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the continuous development of hyperspectral remote sensing technology, it has been widely used in vegetation mapping. However, sparse vegetation canopy, soil background, and spectral similarity between different types of vegetation are still the main challenges for vegetation types mapping in arid areas. As a result, it is difficult to achieve reliable classification accuracy by using spectral or texture features separately. Generalized Normal Distribution Optimization (GNDO) is a new feature optimization algorithm, with advantages in quality and stability of feature extraction results, comparing to traditional optimization algorithms. But it has not yet been applied to select bands of hyperspectral data. In order to validate the feasibility of combining ZY-1 02D spectral and texture features to classify vegetation types in arid areas, to verify the effectiveness of the GNDO method for bands selection of hyperspectral data, and to explore the effects of feature selection methods and training sample numbers on the classification accuracy of vegetation mapping, different Wrapper Optimization methods, such as Genetic Algorithm (GA), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Grey Wolf Optimization (GWO), and GNDO, were applied to select spectral features for vegetation mapping, taking the area around Zongjia Town, Dulan County, Qinghai Province, China as the research area, then the band selection results of these methods were analyzed. Train sample set containing 30, 50, 100, 150, and 200 pixels per class were used to select bands and to train the classifier. Different methods (ALL (without bands selection), GA, PSO, GWO, GNDO) and different sizes of the trained sample sets (30, 50, 100, 150, and 200 pixels per class) were used to obtain 25 spectral feature-based classification data sets. Simultaneously, 8 texture features (mean, variance, homogeneity, contrast, dissimilarity, entropy, second moment) were extracted using the Gray-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) method, and selected on basis of distinguishability for vegetation types. Texture features (TEX) were combined with spectral feature-based classification data sets. The random forest classification method was applied to classify vegetation types for the classification data sets, and the classification accuracy of classification data sets was evaluated and compared. The results show that 1) the blue region (400-450 nm), the red edge region (700-750 nm), and the red region (600-650 nm) are the most sensitive to distinguish the vegetation types in the study area; 2) the GNDO200 achieved the highest overall classification accuracy (80.44%) among the spectral feature-based classification data sets, which was better than the classification accuracy (78.86%) using all bands (ALL200); 3) with the increase of training samples, the overall classification accuracy of each classification data set showed an increasing trend, the classification accuracy of different feature selection methods showed different reliance on the number of training samples; 4) image texture features significantly improved the classification accuracy, and the GWO200+TEX dataset had the highest overall classification accuracy (82.86%). This study could verify the potential of the ZY1-02D, the new hyperspectral satellite data, for the classification of vegetation types in arid areas, and provide an idea for the selection of spectral and texture features in hyperspectral vegetation mapping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The wide use of plastic greenhouses in the word has brought economic benefits, but also caused many environmental problems. Accurate and timely acquisition of spatial distribution information of plastic greenhouse is of great significance to agricultural production and soil management. The use of plastic greenhouse has changed the structure of soil, thus changing the surface spectral characteristics of the soil. Because of the particularity of the plastic film material, the reflection spectrum has strong directionality and uncertainty, so it is difficult to identify plastic greenhouse accurately only depending on the reflectance spectrum characteristics of ground objects. In this paper, Kunming City, Yunnan Province is taken as the research area, using GF-2 image as a single data source, the multi-scale segmentation method is used to obtain the image object efficiently and accurately. According to the detailed spatial information of plastic greenhouse, the applicability of three image object-based texture extraction algorithms, namely GLCM(gray-level co-occurrence matrix), LBP(local binary pattern) and PSI(pixel shape index) for plastic greenhouse identification is analysed and tested. In addition, different texture features are combined with spectral features and NDVI index to form different classification schemes, to explore which one would be the best combination of texture features for identification of plastic greenhouses. In order to explore the robustness of the method, different texture feature combination schemes are applied in the study areas. The results of SVM (support vector machine) classifier are evaluated by confusion matrix. The results show that the overall combination schemes of the two research areas with different landscape patterns have the same trend. The combination of spectral features and NDVI index can accurately identify the scattered waters in each of the two study areas. For plastic greenhouses and impervious surfaces with similar reflectance spectra, adding texture features can make up for limitation of spectral characteristics and improve the overall accuracy. The phenomena of homologous or homologous spectra in spectral features of high spatial resolution image can effectively improve the discrimination between plastic greenhouse and impervious surface. Texture features can significantly improve the identification accuracy of plastic greenhouse following the object-based image classification frame. In the classification scheme of plastic greenhouses with different spatial distribution structures, the LBP (local binary pattern) texture algorithm has the best recognition accuracy, the overall accuracy of study area A is 96.85%, Kappa coefficient is 0.95, and that of study area B is 95.58% and 0.94. Landscape fragment analysis (landscape fragmentation index area mean index, aggregation indices) of the two different study areas showed that the plastic greenhouses in study area A are more fragmented than study area B (area mean indices are 3.39 hm² and 1.37 hm², aggregation indices are 80.64 and 72.98 for plastic greenhouses in study area A and B, respectively). The results of fragmentation are consistent with those of classification, and the accuracy of landscape classification with more space fragments is lower (the highest overall classification accuracy for study area A and B are 98.13% and 96.13%, respectively, the PA(producer accuracy) and UA(user accuracy) are 96.47% and 97.93% for study area A, and 90.67%, 99.68% for study area B). The results show that texture features based on image objects can improve the recognition accuracy of small-scale plastic greenhouse. This is of great significance to the accurate mapping of the distribution of plastic greenhouses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The wide use of plastic greenhouses in the word has brought economic benefits, but also caused many environmental problems. Accurate and timely acquisition of spatial distribution information of plastic greenhouse is of great significance to agricultural production and soil management. The use of plastic greenhouse has changed the structure of soil, thus changing the surface spectral characteristics of the soil. Because of the particularity of the plastic film material, the reflection spectrum has strong directionality and uncertainty, so it is difficult to identify plastic greenhouse accurately only depending on the reflectance spectrum characteristics of ground objects. In this paper, Kunming City, Yunnan Province is taken as the research area, using GF-2 image as a single data source, the multi-scale segmentation method is used to obtain the image object efficiently and accurately. According to the detailed spatial information of plastic greenhouse, the applicability of three image object-based texture extraction algorithms, namely GLCM(gray-level co-occurrence matrix), LBP(local binary pattern) and PSI(pixel shape index) for plastic greenhouse identification is analysed and tested. In addition, different texture features are combined with spectral features and NDVI index to form different classification schemes, to explore which one would be the best combination of texture features for identification of plastic greenhouses. In order to explore the robustness of the method, different texture feature combination schemes are applied in the study areas. The results of SVM (support vector machine) classifier are evaluated by confusion matrix. The results show that the overall combination schemes of the two research areas with different landscape patterns have the same trend. The combination of spectral features and NDVI index can accurately identify the scattered waters in each of the two study areas. For plastic greenhouses and impervious surfaces with similar reflectance spectra, adding texture features can make up for limitation of spectral characteristics and improve the overall accuracy. The phenomena of homologous or homologous spectra in spectral features of high spatial resolution image can effectively improve the discrimination between plastic greenhouse and impervious surface. Texture features can significantly improve the identification accuracy of plastic greenhouse following the object-based image classification frame. In the classification scheme of plastic greenhouses with different spatial distribution structures, the LBP (local binary pattern) texture algorithm has the best recognition accuracy, the overall accuracy of study area A is 96.85%, Kappa coefficient is 0.95, and that of study area B is 95.58% and 0.94. Landscape fragment analysis (landscape fragmentation index area mean index, aggregation indices) of the two different study areas showed that the plastic greenhouses in study area A are more fragmented than study area B (area mean indices are 3.39 hm2 and 1.37 hm2, aggregation indices are 80.64 and 72.98 for plastic greenhouses in study area A and B, respectively). The results of fragmentation are consistent with those of classification, and the accuracy of landscape classification with more space fragments is lower (the highest overall classification accuracy for study area A and B are 98.13% and 96.13%, respectively, the PA(producer accuracy) and UA(user accuracy) are 96.47% and 97.93% for study area A, and 90.67%, 99.68% for study area B). The results show that texture features based on image objects can improve the recognition accuracy of small-scale plastic greenhouse. This is of great significance to the accurate mapping of the distribution of plastic greenhouses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chlorophyll is an important pigment for crop light energy utilization, which directly affects the process of energy material conversion and transmission. The change of chlorophyll content directly reflects the ability of photosynthesis and the nutritional status of crop growth. When the traditional unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) remote sensing was used for crop nutrition monitoring, most of them started from the spectral vegetation indices, ignoring the characteristics of the image itself. In this study, we estimated potato leaf chlorophyll content from a comprehensive index formed by the fusion of multi-spectral vegetation indices, texture features and comprehensive indicators of data fusion. The effect of comprehensive index model on estimating potato leaf chlorophyll content was explored. First, we used the UAV multi-spectral images during the whole potato growth period in 2018 in Xiaotangshan, Changping, and Beijing. The multi-spectral vegetation index, texture characteristics and other variables were first extracted from UVA images, then their correlation relationships with leaf chlorophyll content were analyzed. The optimal image variables were screened out, and the whole subset analysis was based on adjusted determination coefficient and 10-fold cross-validation was used to estimate the leaf chlorophyll content of potato. Finally, the vegetation index and texture features were reconstructed by principal component fusion to establish a new comprehensive index for chlorophyll content estimation. It was found that the leaf chlorophyll content estimation model based on comprehensive index was better than that based on multi-spectral vegetation indices and texture features. The main reason was that the comprehensive index contained both spectral information and image texture information. Multispectral information and model accuracy had also been significantly improved. In the bud period, compared with the vegetation indices based model and the texture feature based model, the determination coefficient (R2) of the comprehensive index model increased 0.104 and 0.136, while the normalized root mean squared error (NRMSE) reduced 1.3% and 1.6%. During the tuber formation period, the determination coefficient of comprehensive index model was increased 0.04.and 0.101, while the NRMSE was decreased 0.5% and 1.2%, compared with the other 2 models. In the tuber growth period, the determination coefficient of comprehensive index model increased 0.075 and 0.111, and the NRMSE decreased 0.9% and 1.3% compared with the vegetation index model and the texture feature model. During the starch accumulation period, the R2 of comprehensive index model increased 0.017 and 0.046, and the NRMSE decreased 0.2% and 0.6%, compared with vegetation index model and texture feature model. In the maturity period, the determination coefficient of comprehensive index model increased 0.092 and 0.057, and the NRMSE decreased 2.4% and 1.5%.Therefore, the effect of comprehensive index estimation model was the best followed by multi-spectral vegetation indices model and the texture feature model was the worst. The starch accumulation period was the best growth period for estimating chlorophyll content by multispectral vegetation index and texture characteristics, while bud period was the best growth period for estimating chlorophyll content by comprehensive index. Estimating potato chlorophyll content based on multi-spectral image from UAV platform can provide a feasible method for potato growth nutrition monitoring. It realizes low-cost, fast and high-throughput monitoring of potato growth and nutrition information, as well as provides guarantee for fine management of farmland irrigation, variable fertilization and so on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, it's still difficult to entirely replace the artificial visual interpretation for the computer automatic classification, which is used to extract land cover types' information from the remote sensing imagery, because the automatic method needs more efforts to improve the precision of the classification results. Furthermore, this problem has become the key joint of the automatic classification extraction. How to extract land cover types' information in western area of Jilin, is one of the important problems, and the confused land cover types needs to be distinguished. The aim of this study is to deepen the application of remote sensing classification method that is used to extract land cover information automatically and quickly from the satellite imagery. The western area of Jilin is selected as the main research area. A new total solution to extract land cover information, based on the spatial variation theory, has been designed for the convenient automatic classification with the remote sensing technology. The remote sensing classification scheme is carried out by coding the R language algorithm and operating the remote sensing software ERDAS platform. The land cover types in Zhenlai County in the western area of Jilin, have been extracted and monitored through the combined utilization of 4 indices, including semivariance value of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) dataset, local variance of image texture, modified soil-adjusted vegetation index and normalized difference water index, which have significant meaning for the land cover types in the transition zone between cropping area and nomadic area. These variances have definite physical meaning (including vegetation, water, and soil drought conditions), so that the phenological information was used to build a multi-dimensional feature space classification data set. The results indicated that: 1) A total of 11 land cover types are extracted, using the multi-temporal remote sensing information to build a multidimensional classification characteristics data set based on the Landsat 8 data. The overall classification accuracy of the algorithm is 95.50%; the Kappa coefficient of classification is 0.9504. The automatic extracting approach implemented obtains a comparatively ideal classification result; 2) The introduction of 3 characteristic variables of the classification in the scheme significantly improves the separability of the confused land cover types. Considering the vegetation classification, the vegetation growth information has practical life-activity significance, and is a real-time dynamic method for the vegetation change monitoring; 3) Improving the land cover classification accuracy is not to introduce more characteristic parameters of the classification, but to effectively combine multiple appropriate classification variables. The new method can broaden the application vision and the scope of the ecological remote sensing investigation of surface vegetation. Moreover, the introduction of new variables not only makes the macro monitoring more convenient, but also improves the accuracy of classification of remote sensing interpretation. It's noted that the extracted classification has obvious regional feature, and the regional feature is consistent with the farming cultivation characteristics on the Northeast Plain. In a word, the results can provide a credible approach and valuable example for extracting and monitoring land cover type in farming-pastoral transitional zone. It is feasible to use the spatial variation theory to extract and monitor land cover type by combining the several evaluation indices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both artificial visual interpretation and computer automatic classification were the mainly remote sensing methods used to extract farmland information. At present, it is still difficult to entirely replace the artificial visual interpretation for the computer automatic classification to extract farmlands' type information of the remote sensing image, because the automatic method needs more efforts to improve the precision of the classification results, so the problem became the key link of the automatic classification extraction. How to extract farmlands' type information in the western part of Jilin is one of the major problems which the paper attempts to solve to distinguish paddy field from dry land. A new solution to extract the farmland information has been designed for the remote sensing automatic classification, based on the spatial variation theory. The classification scheme was carried out by operating in an R language platform and the remote sensing software ERDAS platform. The farmland type of Zhenlai in the western of Jilin was extracted and monitored by making use of four indexes, the range of NDVI series, the local variance of image texture, the modified soil adjusted vegetation index, and the normalized difference water index, which have significant meaning for the farmland cover type in the transition zone between the cropping area and the nomadic area. These variances with clear physical meaning information (including the vegetation, water, soil drought conditions) and phonological information were used to build a multi-dimensional feature space classification data set. The results indicated that: 1) the dry field of which an area of 1065.337 km2 was cultivated in the study area was the largest farmlands' type, and also was one of the most important ecological landscape types. It's the spatial distribution characteristic of the study area that is a relatively dispersed dry field, and a relatively concentrated paddy field; 2) based on the multidimensional space data set, the algorithm of a support vector machine (SVM) was chosen to automatically extract the farmland types' data of the paddy field and the dry land. The overall classification accuracy of the algorithm was 94%, the Kappa coefficient of the classification was 0.87, and the extracted accuracy of the paddy field was 98.3%, while the extracted accuracy of the dry land was 98%. The existing automatic extraction approach was implemented to obtain a comparatively ideal classification result; 3) through the farmland's regional analysis, a depression that has more lowland and easy seeper is suitable for the reclamation of paddy field. It's noted that the extracted classification has an obvious regional farmland type, and the regional features were consistent with the farming cultivation characteristics in the northeast plains; 4) both rice and corn were typical unimodal type growth crops, and the similar growth peak, but the result of the range (rice, 3.8±0.4; upland crops, 3.4±0.3;) noted that: the phenology information of different vegetation types has its own characteristics; this characteristic of the NDVI seasonal variation curve is real. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]