A Crown-Following Approach to the Automatic Delineation of Individual Tree Crowns in High Spatial Resolution Aerial Images

Gougeon, François A.

doi:10.1080/07038992.1995.10874622

Cited by 341 publications

(191 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…ITC has hitherto been applied either to monoscopic high resolution images [15][16][17][18] (see [19] for a review) or to lidar point clouds or canopy height models ( [20][21][22][23][24]; see [25] for a review of different algorithms over diverse types of forest). Species identification of individual trees using only the 3D data of lidar has been demonstrated [6] using alpha shapes and height distribution, intensity and textural features derived from canopy height models (CHMs).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterizing the Height Structure and Composition of a Boreal Forest Using an Individual Tree Crown Approach Applied to Photogrammetric Point Clouds

St-Onge

Audet

Bégin

2015

Forests

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Photogrammetric point clouds (PPC) obtained by stereomatching of aerial photographs now have a resolution sufficient to discern individual trees. We have produced such PPCs of a boreal forest and delineated individual tree crowns using a segmentation algorithm applied to the canopy height model derived from the PPC and a lidar terrain model. The crowns were characterized in terms of height and species (spruce, fir, and deciduous). Species classification used the 3D shape of the single crowns and their reflectance properties. The same was performed on a lidar dataset. Results show that the quality of PPC data generally approaches that of airborne lidar. For pixel-based canopy height models, viewing geometry in aerial images, forest structure (dense vs. open canopies), and composition (deciduous vs. conifers) influenced the quality of the 3D reconstruction of PPCs relative to lidar. Nevertheless, when individual tree height distributions were analyzed, PPC-based results were very similar to those extracted from lidar. The random forest classification (RF) of individual trees performed better in the lidar case when only 3D metrics were used (83% accuracy for lidar, 79% for PPC). However, when 3D and intensity or multispectral data were used together, the accuracy of PPCs (89%) surpassed that of lidar (86%).

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterizing the Height Structure and Composition of a Boreal Forest Using an Individual Tree Crown Approach Applied to Photogrammetric Point Clouds

St-Onge

Audet

Bégin

2015

Forests

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“…Manual methods are limited in their application due to a lack of objectivity and prohibitive time requirements. More automated approaches have used image processing techniques to map tree cover using digital aerial photographs (Gougeon, 1995;Kadmon & Harari-Kremer, 1999). Automated approaches are the more practical choice for mapping, especially since one goal of this work is to develop a repeatable procedure which could be used at various sites globally.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of a MODIS tree cover validation data set for Western Province, Zambia

Hansen

DeFries

Townshend

et al. 2002

Remote Sensing of Environment

119

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“…The template-matching algorithms match a synthetic image model or template of a tree crown to radiometric values [21][22][23]. The valley-following method, developed by Gougeon [24], has been successfully used to extract tree crowns and tops of man-made coniferous forests in temperate zones by using aerial photographs [18][19][20]. Additionally, the individual tree crown (ITC) approach using the valley-following method has been successfully programmed by the Pacific Forestry Centre of the Canadian Forest Service, which made it possible to delineate tree crowns and tops on a large scale.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interpretation of Forest Resources at the Individual Tree Level at Purple Mountain, Nanjing City, China, Using WorldView-2 Imagery by Combining GPS, RS and GIS Technologies

et al. 2013

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This study attempted to measure forest resources at the individual tree level using high-resolution images by combining GPS, RS, and Geographic Information System (GIS) technologies. The images were acquired by the WorldView-2 satellite with a resolution of 0.5 m in the panchromatic band and 2.0 m in the multispectral bands. Field data of 90 plots were used to verify the interpreted accuracy. The tops of trees in three groups, namely ≥10 cm, ≥15 cm, and ≥20 cm DBH (diameter at breast height), were extracted by the individual tree crown (ITC) approach using filters with moving windows of 3 × 3 pixels, 5 × 5 pixels and 7 × 7 pixels, respectively. In the study area, there were 1,203,970 trees of DBH over 10 cm, and the interpreted accuracy was 73.68 ± 15.14% averaged over the 90 plots. The numbers of the trees that were ≥15 cm and ≥20 cm DBH were 727,887 and 548,919, with an average accuracy of 68.74 ± 17.21% and 71.92 ± 18.03%, respectively. The pixel-based classification showed that the classified accuracies of the 16 classes obtained using the eight multispectral bands were higher than those obtained using only the four standard bands. The increments ranged from 0.1% for the water class to 17.0% for Metasequoia glyptostroboides, with an average value of 4.8% for the 16 classes. In addition, to overcome the "mixed pixels" problem, a crown-based supervised classification, which can improve the classified accuracy of both dominant OPEN ACCESSRemote Sens. 2014, 6 88 species and smaller classes, was used for generating a thematic map of tree species. The improvements of the crown-to pixel-based classification ranged from −1.6% for the open forest class to 34.3% for Metasequoia glyptostroboides, with an average value of 20.3% for the 10 classes. All tree tops were then annotated with the species attributes from the map, and a tree count of different species indicated that the forest of Purple Mountain is mainly dominated by Quercus acutissima, Liquidambar formosana and Pinus massoniana. The findings from this study lead to the recommendation of using the crown-based instead of the pixel-based classification approach in classifying mixed forests.

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A Crown-Following Approach to the Automatic Delineation of Individual Tree Crowns in High Spatial Resolution Aerial Images

Cited by 341 publications

References 4 publications

Characterizing the Height Structure and Composition of a Boreal Forest Using an Individual Tree Crown Approach Applied to Photogrammetric Point Clouds

Characterizing the Height Structure and Composition of a Boreal Forest Using an Individual Tree Crown Approach Applied to Photogrammetric Point Clouds

Development of a MODIS tree cover validation data set for Western Province, Zambia

Interpretation of Forest Resources at the Individual Tree Level at Purple Mountain, Nanjing City, China, Using WorldView-2 Imagery by Combining GPS, RS and GIS Technologies

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