Title
Tree Cover Estimation in Global Drylands from Space Using Deep Learning
Abstract
Accurate tree cover mapping is of paramount importance in many fields, from biodiversity conservation to carbon stock estimation, ecohydrology, erosion control, or Earth system modelling. Despite this importance, there is still uncertainty about global forest cover, particularly in drylands. Recently, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) conducted a costly global assessment of dryland forest cover through the visual interpretation of orthoimages using the Collect Earth software, involving hundreds of operators from around the world. Our study proposes a new automatic method for estimating tree cover using artificial intelligence and free orthoimages. Our results show that our tree cover classification model, based on convolutional neural networks (CNN), is 23% more accurate than the manual visual interpretation used by FAO, reaching up to 79% overall accuracy. The smallest differences between the two methods occurred in the driest regions, but disagreement increased with the percentage of tree cover. The application of CNNs could be used to improve and reduce the cost of tree cover maps from the local to the global scale, with broad implications for research and management.
Year
DOI
Venue
2020
10.3390/rs12030343
REMOTE SENSING
Keywords
Field
DocType
convolutional neural networks,data augmentation,deep learning,dry forest,forest mapping,large-scale datasets,transfer learning
Christian ministry,Dry forest,Remote sensing,Tree cover,Work program,Geology,Library science,European union,Government
Journal
Volume
Issue
Citations 
12
3
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
0
6
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Guirado100.34
Domingo Alcaraz-Segura2244.78
Javier Cabello3223.37
Puertas-Ruíz400.34
Francisco Herrera5273911168.49
Siham Tabik616718.92