1,720,958 research outputs found
Plant Species Classification and Biodiversity Estimation from UAV Images with Deep Learning
Biodiversity is a characteristic of ecosystems that plays a crucial role in the study of their evolution, and to estimate it, the species of all plants need to be determined. In this study, we used Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to gather RGB images of mid-to-high-altitude ecosystems in the Zao mountains (Japan). All the data-collection missions took place in autumn so the plants present distinctive seasonal coloration. Patches from single trees and bushes were manually extracted from the collected orthomosaics. Subsequently, Deep Learning image-classification networks were used to automatically determine the species of each tree or bush and estimate biodiversity. Both Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and Transformer-based models were considered (ResNet, RegNet, ConvNeXt, and SwinTransformer). To measure and estimate biodiversity, we relied on the Gini–Simpson Index, the Shannon–Wiener Index, and Species Richness. We present two separate scenarios for evaluating the readiness of the technology for practical use: the first scenario uses a subset of the data with five species and a testing set that has a very similar percentage of each species to those present in the training set. The models studied reach very high performances with over 99 Accuracy and 98 F1 Score (the harmonic mean of Precision and Recall) for image classification and biodiversity estimates under 1% error. The second scenario uses the full dataset with nine species and large variations in class balance between the training and testing datasets, which is often the case in practical use situations. The results in this case remained fairly high for Accuracy at 90.64% but dropped to 51.77% for F1 Score. The relatively low F1 Score value is partly due to a small number of misclassifications having a disproportionate impact in the final measure, but still, the large difference between the Accuracy and F1 Score highlights the complexity of finely evaluating the classification results of Deep Learning Networks. Even in this very challenging scenario, the biodiversity estimation remained with relatively small (6–14%) errors for the most detailed indices, showcasing the readiness of the technology for practical use
2 Datasets of forests for Computer Vision and Deep Learning techniques
Datasets:
1) Coastal forest in Shonai area; contains an orthomosaic (processed by Metashape) of the coastal forest and annotated layers (processed in Gimp)
Annotated layers: 0 = annotations of black locust; 1 = annotations of soil; 2 = annotations of man-made; 3 = annotations of other trees and the orthomosaic as JPEG file
2) Mixed forest images of the Yamagata University Research Forest taken in the winter season; contains 7 orthomosaics (TIFF file), annotated layers (named wM1 to wM7; processed in Gimp)
Orthomosaics: 7 orthomosaics of 5 different sites; for one of the sites we provide 3 orthomosaics of different days and illumination conditions
Annotated layers: 0 = annotations of river class; 1 = annotations of deciduous class; 2 = annotations of uncovered class; 3 = annotations of evergreen class; 4 = annotations of man-made class and the orthomosaic as JPEG file
The dataset was used for our transfer learning study in the field of forest applications. We used in one experiment the winter images to run deep learning algorithms. In a second experiment we used the coastal forest data for a similar approach
Using UAV RGB Images for Assessing Tree Species Diversity in Elevation Gradient of Zao Mountains
Vegetation biodiversity in mountainous regions is controlled by altitudinal gradients and their corresponding microclimate. Higher temperatures, shorter snow cover periods, and high variability in the precipitation regime might lead to changes in vegetation distribution in mountains all over the world. In this study, we evaluate vegetation distribution along an altitudinal gradient (1334–1667 m.a.s.l.) in the Zao Mountains, northeastern Japan, by means of alpha diversity indices, including species richness, the Shannon index, and the Simpson index. In order to assess vegetation species and their characteristics along the mountain slope selected, fourteen 50 m × 50 m plots were selected at different altitudes and scanned with RGB cameras attached to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Image analysis revealed the presence of 12 dominant tree and shrub species of which the number of individuals and heights were validated with fieldwork ground truth data. The results showed a significant variability in species richness along the altitudinal gradient. Species richness ranged from 7 to 11 out of a total of 12 species. Notably, species such as Fagus crenata, despite their low individual numbers, dominated the canopy area. In contrast, shrub species like Quercus crispula and Acer tschonoskii had high individual numbers but covered smaller canopy areas. Tree height correlated well with canopy areas, both representing tree size, which has a strong relationship with species diversity indices. Species such as F. crenata, Q. crispula, Cornus controversa, and others have an established range of altitudinal distribution. At high altitudes (1524–1653 m), the average shrubs’ height is less than 4 m, and the presence of Abies mariesii is negligible because of high mortality rates caused by a severe bark beetle attack. These results highlight the complex interactions between species abundance, canopy area, and altitude, providing valuable insights into vegetation distribution in mountainous regions. However, species diversity indices vary slightly and show some unusually low values without a clear pattern. Overall, these indices are higher at lower altitudes, peak at mid-elevations, and decrease at higher elevations in the study area. Vegetation diversity indices did not show a clear downward trend with altitude but depicted a vegetation composition at different altitudes as controlled by their surrounding environment. Finally, UAVs showed their significant potential for conducting large-scale vegetation surveys reliably and in a short time, with low costs and low manpower
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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