A Semiautomated Probabilistic Framework for Tree-Cover Delineation from 1- m NAIP Imagery Using A High-Performance Computing Architecture

SMC Author

Edward Boyda

SMC Affiliated Work

1

Status

Faculty

School

School of Science

Department

Physics and Astronomy

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-2015

Publication / Conference / Sponsorship

IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing

Description/Abstract

Accurate tree-cover estimates are useful in deriving above-ground biomass density estimates from very high resolution (VHR) satellite imagery data. Numerous algorithms have been designed to perform tree-cover delineation in high-to-coarse-resolution satellite imagery, but most of them do not scale to terabytes of data, typical in these VHR data sets. In this paper, we present an automated probabilistic framework for the segmentation and classification of 1-m VHR data as obtained from the National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) for deriving tree-cover estimates for the whole of Continental United States, using a high-performance computing architecture. The results from the classification and segmentation algorithms are then consolidated into a structured prediction framework using a discriminative undirected probabilistic graphical model based on conditional random field, which helps in capturing the higher order contextual dependence relations between neighboring pixels. Once the final probability maps are generated, the framework is updated and retrained by incorporating expert knowledge through the relabeling of misclassified image patches. This leads to a significant improvement in the true positive rates and reduction in false positive rates (FPRs). The tree-cover maps were generated for the state of California, which covers a total of 11 095 NAIP tiles and spans a total geographical area of 163 696 sq. miles. Our framework produced correct detection rates of around 88% for fragmented forests and 74% for urban tree-cover areas, with FPRs lower than 2% for both regions. Comparative studies with the National Land-Cover Data algorithm and the LiDAR high-resolution canopy height model showed the effectiveness of our algorithm for generating accurate high-resolution tree-cover maps.

Keywords

Aerial imagery, conditional random field (CRF), high-performance computing (HPC), machine learning, National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP), neural network (NN), statistical region merging (SRM)

Scholarly

yes

DOI

10.1109/TGRS.2015.2428197

Volume

53

Issue

10

First Page

5690

Last Page

5708

Disciplines

Physics

Original Citation

Edward Boyda (Physics and Astronomy): “A Semiautomated Probabilistic Framework for Tree-Cover Delineation from 1- m NAIP Imagery Using A High-Performance Computing Architecture,” by S. Basu, et al., in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing 53:10, 5690 (2015). doi:10.1109/TGRS.2015.2428197

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