@article{RederMundAlbertetal.2021, author = {Reder, Stefan and Mund, Jan-Peter and Albert, Nicole and Waßermann, Lilli and Miranda, Luis}, title = {Detection of Windthrown Tree Stems on UAV-Orthomosaics Using U-Net Convolutional Networks}, series = {Remote Sensing}, volume = {14}, journal = {Remote Sensing}, number = {1}, publisher = {MDPI}, issn = {2072-4292}, doi = {10.3390/rs14010075}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:eb1-opus-2213}, pages = {25}, year = {2021}, abstract = {The increasing number of severe storm events is threatening European forests. Besides the primary damages directly caused by storms, there are secondary damages such as bark beetle outbreaks and tertiary damages due to negative effects on the market. These subsequent damages can be minimized if a detailed overview of the affected area and the amount of damaged wood can be obtained quickly and included in the planning of clearance measures. The present work utilizes UAV-orthophotos and an adaptation of the U-Net architecture for the semantic segmentation and localization of windthrown stems. The network was pre-trained with generic datasets, randomly combining stems and background samples in a copy-paste augmentation, and afterwards trained with a specific dataset of a particular windthrow. The models pre-trained with generic datasets containing 10, 50 and 100 augmentations per annotated windthrown stems achieved F1-scores of 73.9\% (S1Mod10), 74.3\% (S1Mod50) and 75.6\% (S1Mod100), outperforming the baseline model (F1-score 72.6\%), which was not pre-trained. These results emphasize the applicability of the method to correctly identify windthrown trees and suggest the collection of training samples from other tree species and windthrow areas to improve the ability to generalize. Further enhancements of the network architecture are considered to improve the classification performance and to minimize the calculative costs.}, language = {en} } @article{KrauseSandersMundetal.2019, author = {Krause, Stuart and Sanders, Tanja G. M. and Mund, Jan-Peter and Greve, Klaus}, title = {UAV-Based Photogrammetric Tree Height Measurement for Intensive Forest Monitoring}, series = {Remote Sensing}, journal = {Remote Sensing}, number = {11(7)}, publisher = {MDPI}, issn = {2072-4292}, doi = {10.3390/rs11070758}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:eb1-opus-3240}, pages = {18}, year = {2019}, abstract = {The measurement of tree height has long been an important tree attribute for the purpose of calculating tree growth, volume, and biomass, which in turn deliver important ecological and economical information to decision makers. Tree height has traditionally been measured by indirect field-based techniques, however these methods are rarely contested. With recent advances in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) remote sensing technologies, the possibility to acquire accurate tree heights semi-automatically has become a reality. In this study, photogrammetric and field-based tree height measurements of a Scots Pine stand were validated using destructive methods. The intensive forest monitoring site implemented for the study was configured with permanent ground control points (GCPs) measured with a Total Station (TS). Field-based tree height measurements resulted in a similar level of error to that of the photogrammetric measurements, with root mean square error (RMSE) values of 0.304 m (1.82\%) and 0.34 m (2.07\%), respectively (n = 34). A conflicting bias was, however, discovered where field measurements tended to overestimate tree heights and photogrammetric measurements were underestimated. The photogrammetric tree height measurements of all trees (n = 285) were validated against the field-based measurements and resulted in a RMSE of 0.479 m (2.78\%). Additionally, two separate photogrammetric tree height datasets were compared (n = 251), and a very low amount of error was observed with a RMSE of 0.138 m (0.79\%), suggesting a high potential for repeatability. This study shows that UAV photogrammetric tree height measurements are a viable option for intensive forest monitoring plots and that the possibility to acquire within-season tree growth measurements merits further study. Additionally, it was shown that negative and positive biases evident in field-based and UAV-based photogrammetric tree height measurements could potentially lead to misinterpretation of results when field-based measurements are used as validation.}, language = {en} }