Abstract
High spatial resolution satellite imagery provides data that enable the analysis of detailed landscape information, including tree crowns. The inherent characteristics of Eucalypt crowns are challenging to remotely sensed tree crown extraction. This paper develops and applies an object-based tree crown delineation approach suitable for estimating canopy cover of Eucalypts in tropical savannas. A two level segmentation was undertaken upon QuickBird data. First, a broad segmentation masked out non-Eucalypt dominant communities; and second, a finer segmentation and ruleset identified seed objects within crowns, and then expanded these objects to cover entire crown extents. Of the 1,604 tree crowns manually observed within the scene, 84.3 percent were detected by the automated seed identification process. Seventy-five percent of tree crowns extracted through the region growing process show strong overlap with their corresponding reference crowns. Results indicate the potential of this method for delineating tree crowns from Eucalypt dominant savanna and the use of this information to estimate canopy cover and tree distribution patterns.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 813-824 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing |
| Volume | 77 |
| Issue number | 8 |
| Publication status | Published - 2011 |