EFFECTS OF FLIGHT AND SMOOTHING PARAMETERS OF NUMBER OF TREES WITH AERIAL IMAGERY IN A NATIVE BRAZILIAN ATLANTIC FOREST REMNANT

Abstract

Background: The objective of this study was to detect native trees from different flight configurations and smoothing techniques in Canopy Height Models (CHMs) in a native remnant in the municipality of Curitiba, State of Paraná, Brazil. To do so, eight flights were carried out with a Phantom 4, with two flight planning applications (Litchi and Pix4Dcapture) and two flight arrangements (single and double), totaling four flights for each application. All flights were processed using the Pix4Dmapper program. The LiDAR database was obtained with a DJI Matrice 300 system and from this data, the Digital Terrain Model (DTM) of the area was extracted. From the UAV data, the Digital Surface Model (DSM) of each flight was obtained. Subtracting each DSM from the DTM resulted in the CHMs for each UAV flight flown. The CHMs were smoothed with the CHMsmoothing function and three search window sizes were tested (6.5 x 6.5, 8 x 8, and 10 x 10).

Results: The results of the ITD approach revealed that in unsmoothed and smoothed CHMs, the search window of size 8 resulted in the best precision metrics, with the highest recall, precision, and F-score values. In the smallest window size, there was the highest number of false positives while in the largest window size, the omitted trees were more representative.

Conclusion: The best combination between flight parameters and smoothing techniques was with the Litchi application, with a single flight and 80% lateral and longitudinal overlap, resulting in individuals detected with an F-score of 0.94