Abstract
Tropical forests have exceptional floristic diversity, but their characterization remains incomplete, in part due to the resource intensity of in-situ assessments. Remote sensing technologies can provide valuable, cost-effective, large-scale insights. This study investigates the combined use of airborne LiDAR and imaging spectroscopy to map tree species at landscape scale in French Guiana. Binary classifiers were developed for each of 20 species using linear discriminant analysis (LDA), regularized discriminant analysis (RDA) and logistic regression (LR). Complementing visible and near infrared (VNIR) spectral bands with short wave infrared (SWIR) bands improved the mean average classification accuracy of the target species from 56.1% to 79.6%. Increasing the number of non-focal species decreased the success rate of target species identification. Classification performance was not significantly affected by impurity rates (confusion between assigned classes) in the non-focal class (up to 5% of bias), provided that an adequate criterion was used for adjusting threshold probability assignment. A limited number of crowns (30 crowns) in each species class was sufficient to retrieve correct labels effectively. Overall canopy area of target species was strongly correlated to their basal area over 118 ha at 1.5 ha resolution, indicating that operational application of the method is a realistic prospect (R2 = 0.75 for six major commercial tree species).
Highlights
Tropical forests are a major terrestrial plant biodiversity reservoir [1]
We explored the potential impact of mislabeling of the focal pixels, reckoning that such errors may occur regardless of the efforts made in the field
The combination of visible and near infrared (VNIR) and short wave infrared (SWIR) information strongly improved the performances of all classifiers compared to VNIR information only, with an increase in F-measure of 23.8%, 27.3% and 19.4% for linear discriminant analysis (LDA), regularized discriminant analysis (RDA) and logistic regression (LR) respectively
Summary
Tropical forests are a major terrestrial plant biodiversity reservoir [1]. The preservation of this biome is globally important. From 2000 to 2010, logging in natural forests removed approximately 5% of the world’s forest area [3]. While the biggest drivers for biodiversity change [4] have been shown to be land use change and climate change, logging impact on the biodiversity of various taxonomic groups (mammals, birds, amphibians) is well documented [5]. Logging impact is not restricted to the removal of a few commercial stems per ha, and includes damage associated with opening tracks to access to the logging area. Proper management of tropical forests is crucial to mitigate the erosion of biodiversity [13]
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