The remote sensing extraction of large areas of arecanut (Areca catechu L.) planting plays an important role in investigating the distribution of arecanut planting area and the subsequent adjustment and optimization of regional planting structures. Satellite imagery has previously been used to investigate and monitor the agricultural and forestry vegetation in Hainan. However, the monitoring accuracy is affected by the cloudy and rainy climate of this region, as well as the high level of land fragmentation. In this paper, we used PlanetScope imagery at a 3 m spatial resolution over the Hainan arecanut planting area to investigate the high-precision extraction of the arecanut planting distribution based on feature space optimization. First, spectral and textural feature variables were selected to form the initial feature space, followed by the implementation of the random forest algorithm to optimize the feature space. Arecanut planting area extraction models based on the support vector machine (SVM), BP neural network (BPNN), and random forest (RF) classification algorithms were then constructed. The overall classification accuracies of the SVM, BPNN, and RF models optimized by the RF features were determined as 74.82%, 83.67%, and 88.30%, with Kappa coefficients of 0.680, 0.795, and 0.853, respectively. The RF model with optimized features exhibited the highest overall classification accuracy and kappa coefficient. The overall accuracy of the SVM, BPNN, and RF models following feature optimization was improved by 3.90%, 7.77%, and 7.45%, respectively, compared with the corresponding unoptimized classification model. The kappa coefficient also improved. The results demonstrate the ability of PlanetScope satellite imagery to extract the planting distribution of arecanut. Furthermore, the RF is proven to effectively optimize the initial feature space, composed of spectral and textural feature variables, further improving the extraction accuracy of the arecanut planting distribution. This work can act as a theoretical and technical reference for the agricultural and forestry industries.
IRRIGATION SEASON FOR ARECANUT PALMS (ARECA CATECHU L.)
