Urban Vegetation Mapping from Aerial Imagery Using Explainable AI (XAI)

Urban vegetation mapping is critical in many applications, i.e., preserving biodiversity, maintaining ecological balance, and minimizing the urban heat island effect. It is still challenging to extract accurate vegetation covers from aerial imagery using traditional classification approaches, because urban vegetation categories have complex spatial structures and similar spectral properties. Deep neural networks (DNNs) have shown a significant improvement in remote sensing image classification outcomes during the last few years. These methods are promising in this domain, yet unreliable for various reasons, such as the use of irrelevant descriptor features in the building of the models and lack of quality in the labeled image. Explainable AI (XAI) can help us gain insight into these limits and, as a result, adjust the training dataset and model as needed. Thus, in this work, we explain how an explanation model called Shapley additive explanations (SHAP) can be utilized for interpreting the output of the DNN model that is designed for classifying vegetation covers. We want to not only produce high-quality vegetation maps, but also rank the input parameters and select appropriate features for classification. Therefore, we test our method on vegetation mapping from aerial imagery based on spectral and textural features. Texture features can help overcome the limitations of poor spectral resolution in aerial imagery for vegetation mapping. The model was capable of obtaining an overall accuracy (OA) of 94.44% for vegetation cover mapping. The conclusions derived from SHAP plots demonstrate the high contribution of features, such as Hue, Brightness, GLCM_Dissimilarity, GLCM_Homogeneity, and GLCM_Mean to the output of the proposed model for vegetation mapping. Therefore, the study indicates that existing vegetation mapping strategies based only on spectral characteristics are insufficient to appropriately classify vegetation covers.

Sentinel-1 and 2 Time-Series for Vegetation Mapping Using Random Forest Classification: A Case Study of Northern Croatia

Land-cover (LC) mapping in a morphologically heterogeneous landscape area is a challenging task since various LC classes (e.g., crop types in agricultural areas) are spectrally similar. Most research is still mostly relying on optical satellite imagery for these tasks, whereas synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery is often neglected. Therefore, this research assessed the classification accuracy using the recent Sentinel-1 (S1) SAR and Sentinel-2 (S2) time-series data for LC mapping, especially vegetation classes. Additionally, ancillary data, such as texture features, spectral indices from S1 and S2, respectively, as well as digital elevation model (DEM), were used in different classification scenarios. Random Forest (RF) was used for classification tasks using a proposed hybrid reference dataset derived from European Land Use and Coverage Area Frame Survey (LUCAS), CORINE, and Land Parcel Identification Systems (LPIS) LC database. Based on the RF variable selection using Mean Decrease Accuracy (MDA), the combination of S1 and S2 data yielded the highest overall accuracy (OA) of 91.78%, with a total disagreement of 8.22%. The most pertinent features for vegetation mapping were GLCM Mean and Variance for S1, NDVI, along with Red and SWIR band for S2, whereas the digital elevation model produced major classification enhancement as an input feature. The results of this study demonstrated that the aforementioned approach (i.e., RF using a hybrid reference dataset) is well-suited for vegetation mapping using Sentinel imagery, which can be applied for large-scale LC classifications.

A Hybrid Approach of Combining Random Forest with Texture Analysis and VDVI for Desert Vegetation Mapping Based on UAV RGB Data

Desert vegetation is an important part of arid and semi-arid areas, which plays an important role in preventing wind and fixing sand, conserving water and soil, maintaining the balanced ecosystem. Therefore, mapping the vegetation accurately is necessary to conserve rare desert plants in the fragile ecosystems that are easily damaged and slow to recover. In mapping desert vegetation, there are some weaknesses by using traditional digital classification algorithms from high resolution data. The traditional approach is to use spectral features alone, without spatial information. With the rapid development of drones, cost-effective visible light data is easily available, and the data would be non-spectral but with spatial information. In this study, a method of mapping the desert rare vegetation was developed based on the pixel classifiers and use of Random Forest (RF) algorithm with the feature of VDVI and texture. The results indicated the accuracy of mapping the desert rare vegetation were different with different methods and the accuracy of the method proposed was higher than the traditional method. The most commonly used decision rule in the traditional method, named Maximum Likelihood classifier, produced overall accuracy (76.69%). The inclusion of texture and VDVI features with RGB (Red Green Blue) data could increase the separability, thus improved the precision. The overall accuracy could be up to 84.19%, and the Kappa index with 79.96%. From the perspective of features, VDVI is less important than texture features. The texture features appeared more important than spectral features in desert vegetation mapping. The RF method with the RGB+VDVI+TEXTURE would be better method for desert vegetation mapping compared with the common method. This study is the first attempt of classifying the desert vegetation based on the RGB data, which will help to inform management and conservation of Ulan Buh desert vegetation.

Genus-Physiognomy-Ecosystem (GPE) System for Satellite-Based Classification of Plant Communities

Vegetation mapping and monitoring is important as the composition and distribution of vegetation has been greatly influenced by land use change and the interaction of land use change and climate change. The purpose of vegetation mapping is to discover the extent and distribution of plant communities within a geographical area of interest. The paper introduces the Genus-Physiognomy-Ecosystem (GPE) system for the organization of plant communities from the perspective of satellite remote sensing. It was conceived for broadscale operational vegetation mapping by organizing plant communities according to shared genus and physiognomy/ecosystem inferences, and it offers an intermediate level between the physiognomy/ecosystem and dominant species for the organization of plant communities. A machine learning and cross-validation approach was employed by utilizing multi-temporal Landsat 8 satellite images on a regional scale for the classification of plant communities at three hierarchical levels: (i) physiognomy, (ii) GPE, and (iii) dominant species. The classification at the dominant species level showed many misclassifications and undermined its application for broadscale operational mapping, whereas the GPE system was able to lessen the complexities associated with the dominant species level classification while still being capable of distinguishing a wider variety of plant communities. The GPE system therefore provides an easy-to-understand approach for the operational mapping of plant communities, particularly on a broad scale.