1. Multispectral mapping of key grassland nutrients in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
- Author
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Singh, Leeth, Mutanga, Onisimo, Mafongoya, Paramu, and Peerbhay, Kabir Yunus
- Subjects
PLANT nutrients ,GRASSLANDS ,LIGNINS ,ALGORITHMS ,NUMERICAL analysis - Abstract
RapidEye multispectral imagery is effective in vegetation assessment. This research intends to investigate the utility of using 5-m-resolution RapidEye-5 imagery combined with a machine learning algorithm to detect and map important forage fibre biochemicals such as neutral detergent fibre (NDF), acid detergent fibre (ADF) and lignin in an African tropical grassland. These fibre biochemicals are significant indicators of the palatability of forage digested by grazing ungulates. Analysis was conducted on 140 grass samples collected at plot level and then correlated and mapped using two competent tree ensemble modelling techniques. Results showed that the random forest (RF) method successfully mapped NDF, ADF and lignin with R2 values ranging between .67 and .74. In comparison, stochastic gradient boosting (SGB) was implemented as an alternative method, which produced very similar R2 values ranging between .65 and 0.72. Overall, the results showed that multispectral remote sensing can detect and map key forage fibre biochemicals in a grassland environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2018
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