CNN-Based Methods for Tree Species Detection in UAV Images

Abstract: Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with high-resolution cameras are common in today’s society. Industries, such as the forestry industry, use drones to get a fast overview of tree populations. More advanced sensors, such as near-infrared light or depth data, can increase the amount of information that UAV images provide, providing information about the forest, such as; tree quantity or forest health. However, the fast-expanding field of deep learning could help expand the information acquired using only RGB cameras. Three deep learning models, FasterR-CNN, RetinaNet, and YOLOR were compared to investigate this. It was also investigated if initializing the models using transfer learning from the MS COCO dataset could increase the performance of the models. The dataset used was Swedish Forest Agency (2021): Forest Damages-Spruce Bark Beetle 1.0 National Forest Data Lab and drone images provided by IT-Bolaget Per & Per. The deep learning models were to detect five different tree species; spruce, pine, birch, aspen, and others. The results show potential for the usage of deep learning to detect tree species in images from UAVs.