Single-tree segmentation can greatly contribute to the extraction of forest structure parameters. The LiDAR point cloud from unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was a commonly used data source for the single tree segmentation. However, the point cloud data was large, and the processing was complex. This study aimed to accurately segment the single-tree crown from the point cloud data using deep learning. The main purpose was to improve the processing of point cloud data and the accuracy of single tree segmentation in complex stands. Point cloud rasterization was combined with deep learning to segment the canopy of a single tree. Firstly, the D2000 UAV (Feima Robotics company) platform equipped with the LiDAR sensor (D-LiDAR2000) was used to acquire the point cloud data of a mixed coniferous and broadleaf forest. Lidar360 software was then employed for point cloud denoising, ground point classification, and point cloud normalization preprocessing. Subsequently, the top-down rasterization of the sample plot cloud was performed to calculate the maximum height, maximum intensity, and density information per unit rasterized area of the point cloud. The RGB channels were then mapped corresponding to the rasterized image pixels, in order to make the tree canopy clearer in the rasterized image. Secondly, according to the Mask R-CNN model within the Detectron2 framework, the number of layers and iterations of different backbone networks were compared to select a backbone network that provided superior segmentation performance. Thirdly, the Global Context Network (GC) and Attention Mechanism modules were integrated into the ResNet network. A comparison was made with the simultaneous introduction of the GC Net and Attention Mechanism modules to enhance the segmentation accuracy of the Mask R-CNN model. To validate the practicality of the improved Mask R-CNN model, its segmentation accuracy was compared with that of similar deep learning networks (U-Net and DeepLabv3+). Finally, the tree crown masks that were segmented by the improved Mask R-CNN were used to segment the point cloud of individual tree crowns. The segmentation of the test plot was compared and evaluated using the watershed, K-means, and the improved Mask R-CNN. Among the three backbone networks of Mask R-CNN, the R50-FPN-3X network saved some training time and computational resources, compared with the R101-FPN-3X network. An average accuracy of 76.72% was achieved to increase by 1.01 percentage points higher than that of the R50-FPN-1X network. In the R50-FPN-3X backbone model, after introducing the Squeeze-and-Excitation (SE), Coordinate Attention (CA), and Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) mechanisms, the average accuracy increased by 1.41, 2.14, and 4.65 percentage points compared to the original model, respectively. The GC Net module was integrated into the ResNet network, and the model accuracy was 80.35%, which was an improvement of 3.63 percentage points over the original model. While both CBAM and GC Net attention mechanisms achieved the highest accuracy of 82.91%, thus increasing by 1.54 percentage points and 2.56 percentage points, compared with the two modules alone. The improved Mask R-CNN model achieved an average accuracy that was 7.27 percentage points higher than the U-Net model and 4.62 percentage points higher than the DeepLabv3+ model. The improved Mask R-CNN outperformed the Watershed and K-means algorithms in single-tree crown point cloud segmentation, indicating the highest recall, precision, and F-score of 81.19%, 78.85%, and 80.00%, respectively. The point cloud segmentation with the improved Mask R-CNN network demonstrated the robustness of the tree crown segmentation in mixed coniferous and broadleaf forests. Point cloud data processing was also integrated with deep learning models. The accuracy of single-tree crown segmentation was enhanced significantly, thereby providing reliable foundational data and technical references to assess the forest resource, biomass, and carbon stock.
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Traditional chemical analysis of vegetation biochemical components is destructive and labor-intensive, and hyperspectral techniques can provide an effective means for rapid and non-destructive estimation of vegetation biochemical components.
Based on the LOPEX’93 data set, four transformed spectra (first-order differential DR, reciprocal 1/R, logarithmic logR, reciprocal logarithmic log (1/R)) were performed on the original spectra, and the trilateral parameters, spectral indices, and full-band spectral indices were extracted and the correlations with chlorophyll content (C_ab), dry matter content (LMA), and equivalent water thickness (EWT) were analyzed, and the extracted spectral features with high correlations were used as input variables, and the models were built and predicted by partial least squares regression (PLSR), support vector machine (SVM), and random forest (RF), respectively. The decision coefficient R2 and root mean square error (RMSE) were used as indicators to determine the quality of the models.
The most effective method among the four spectral transformations was the first-order differentiation, in which the first-order differential bands D742 and D535 had strong spectral responses to C_ab; D1700, D1229, and D2192 had high responses to LMA; D1145, D1302, and D955 had high responses to EWT. Although the trilateral parameters improved the correlation with chlorophyll to some extent, the correlation was not as good as the first-order differential spectra and spectral indices. Among the four full-band spectral indices constructed, the correlations of RI, DI, NDVI, and TVI with C_ab were 0.64, 0.66, 0.64, and 0.67, and the correlations were significantly enhanced compared with the conventional spectral indices. The above 8, 5, 5 spectral features about C_ab, LMA, and EWT were involved in modeling and estimation, and the best estimation models were SVM, PLSR, and RF with R2 of 0.73, 0.75, and 0.93, and RMSE of 9.62, 0.001 274, and 0.000 971, respectively.
The first-order differential transform and full-band spectral index can improve the spectral response to biochemical components, and the constructed SVM, PLSR, and RF models can generally achieve the estimation of vegetation leaf C_ab, LMA and EWT, which provide a reference for refining the inversion of vegetation biochemical components from hyperspectral data.
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