Abstract
Photogrammetric UAV sees a surge in use for high-resolution mapping, but its use to map terrain under dense vegetation cover remains challenging due to a lack of exposed ground surfaces. This paper presents a novel object-oriented classification ensemble algorithm to leverage height, texture and contextual information of UAV data to improve landscape classification and terrain estimation. Its implementation incorporates multiple heuristics, such as multi-input machine learning-based classification, object-oriented ensemble, and integration of UAV and GPS surveys for terrain correction. Experiments based on a densely vegetated wetland restoration site showed classification improvement from 83.98% to 96.12% in overall accuracy and from 0.7806 to 0.947 in kappa value. Use of standard and existing UAV terrain mapping algorithms and software produced reliable digital terrain model only over exposed bare grounds (mean error = −0.019 m and RMSE = 0.035 m) but severely overestimated the terrain by ~80% of mean vegetation height in vegetated areas. The terrain correction method successfully reduced the mean error from 0.302 m to −0.002 m (RMSE from 0.342 m to 0.177 m) in low vegetation and from 1.305 m to 0.057 m (RMSE from 1.399 m to 0.550 m) in tall vegetation. Overall, this research validated a feasible solution to integrate UAV and RTK GPS for terrain mapping in densely vegetated environments.
Department(s)
Geography, Geology, and Planning
Document Type
Article
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/rs9111187
Rights Information
© 2017 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Keywords
photogrammetric UAV, high resolution, coastal topographic mapping, wetland restoration, classification correction, terrain correction, object-oriented analysis, classification ensemble
Publication Date
2017
Recommended Citation
Meng, Xuelian, Nan Shang, Xukai Zhang, Chunyan Li, Kaiguang Zhao, Xiaomin Qiu, and Eddie Weeks. "Photogrammetric UAV mapping of terrain under dense coastal vegetation: An object-oriented classification ensemble algorithm for classification and terrain correction." Remote Sensing 9, no. 11 (2017): 1187.
Journal Title
Remote Sensing
