Discrimination of lianas and trees with leaf-level hyperspectral data

By K. Castro-Esau, G. Arturo Sanchez-Azofeifa, Terry M. Caelli. 2004

150 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Lianas are an important component of the biological diversity in two tropical forests with contrasting moisture regimes in Panama. However, their presence in a tree crown may be a source of confusion in remotely sensed data collected for inventories or assessment of vegetation health. The structural growth form of lianas contrasts with trees in that their proportion of leafy biomass to woody biomass is much higher. In effect, they use trees for structural support and typically form a monolayer of leaves above the crown of the supporting tree. Here, we investigated possible differences between hyperspectral signatures of lianas and trees at the leaf level using pattern recognition techniques. Our method involves principal components analysis followed by training and classification using a selection of supervised parametric and nonparametric classifiers. At a tropical dry forest site (Parque Natural Metropolitano), lianas and trees are distinguishable as groups based on their leaf spectral reflectance characteristics in dry season conditions. Classification was improved using ancillary data on leaf chlorophyll content. Their distinction at this site may be related to drought stress and/or phenological differences between the two groups. At a tropical wet forest site (Fort Sherman), discrimination between the two groups was not as clear. Additional research is required to determine the physiological basis of possible differences as well as to determine if these differences are observable at the canopy level.

Subfields: Analytical Chemistry, Ecology, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a87738b0ee7ca063e3724f0d502f75ec12119f91

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Citations in the corpus

Detection of biotic stress (Venturia inaequalis) in apple trees using hyperspectral data: Non-parametric statistical approaches and physiological implications (2007, background): “Castro-Esau et al. (2004) confirmed the improved performance of non-parametric classifiers compared to parametric classifiers in a hyperspectral discrimination between lianas and trees.”
Mapping two Eucalyptus subgenera using multiple endmember spectral mixture analysis and continuum-removed imaging spectrometry data (2011, methodology): “Derivative analysis and wavelet transformation can be useful for class discrimination (e.g., Castro-Esau et al., 2004; Li, 2004; Somers et al., 2009a,b; Zhang et al., 2004).”
Automated mapping of tropical deforestation and forest degradation: CLASlite (2009, background): “Similarly, the spectral reflectance properties of tropical forests are largely driven by species composition, as many species express variation in chemical and structural characteristics [14, 15].”
Differences in leaf traits, leaf internal structure, and spectral reflectance between two communities of lianas and trees: Implications for remote sensing in tropical environments (2009, unknown): “This work expands previous studies by Castro-Esau et al. (2004) and Kalácska et al. (2007) who explored the use of advanced parametric and non-parametric classification approaches to evaluate the spectral separability between lianas and trees at the same sites, but without exploring in-depth the…”
Remote sensing techniques for mangrove mapping (2006, background): “This argument may also be true for the following spectral discrimination and classification studies that used ad hoc measures for selecting smoothing filters without preserving statistical properties of the original data (Gong et al., 2001; Andréfouët et al., 2003; Hochberg and Atkinson, 2003; Schmi”
Hyperspectral discrimination of tropical dry forest lianas and trees: Comparative data reduction approaches at the leaf and canopy levels (2007, unknown): “Castro-Esau et al. (2004) documented the presence of up to 27 species of lianas in one single crown, many of which covered small areas and displayed highly dynamic behavior throughout the year.”