Exploiting hyperspectral and multispectral images in the detection of tree species: A review

Abstract

Classification of tree species provides important data in forest monitoring, sustainable forest management and planning. The recent developments in Multi Spectral (MS) and Hyper Spectral (HS) Imaging sensors in remote sensing have made the detection of tree species easier and accurate. With this systematic review study, it is aimed to understand the contribution of using the Multi Spectral and Hyper Spectral Imaging data in the detection of tree species while highlighting recent advances in the field and emphasizing important directions together with new possibilities for future inquiries. In this review, researchers and decision makers will be informed in two different subjects: First one is about the processing steps of exploiting Multi Spectral and HS images and the second one is about determining the advantages of exploiting Multi Spectral and Hyper Spectral images in the application area of detecting tree species. In this way exploiting satellite data will be facilitated. This will also provide an economical gain for using commercial Multi Spectral and Hyper Spectral Imaging data. Moreover, it should be also kept in mind that, as the number of spectral tags that will be obtained from each tree type are different, both the processing method and the classification method will change accordingly. This review, studies were grouped according to the data exploited (only Hyper Spectral images, only Multi Spectral images and their combinations), type of tree monitored and the processing method used. Then, the contribution of the image data used in the study was evaluated according to the accuracy of classification, the suitable type of tree and the classification method.