An Improved Convolution Neural Network-Based Model for Classifying Foliage and Woody Components from Terrestrial Laser Scanning Data

MASPC_Transform: A Plant Point Cloud Segmentation Network Based on Multi-Head Attention Separation and Position Code

Plant point cloud segmentation is an important step in 3D plant phenotype research. Because the stems, leaves, flowers, and other organs of plants are often intertwined and small in size, this makes plant point cloud segmentation more challenging than other segmentation tasks. In this paper, we propose MASPC_Transform, a novel plant point cloud segmentation network base on multi-head attention separation and position code. The proposed MASPC_Transform establishes connections for similar point clouds scattered in different areas of the point cloud space through multiple attention heads. In order to avoid the aggregation of multiple attention heads, we propose a multi-head attention separation loss based on spatial similarity, so that the attention positions of different attention heads can be dispersed as much as possible. In order to reduce the impact of point cloud disorder and irregularity on feature extraction, we propose a new point cloud position coding method, and use the position coding network based on this method in the local and global feature extraction modules of MASPC_Transform. We evaluate our MASPC_Transform on the ROSE_X dataset. Compared with the state-of-the-art approaches, the proposed MASPC_Transform achieved better segmentation results.

Segmentation of structural parts of rosebush plants with 3D point-based deep learning methods

BACKGROUND

Segmentation of structural parts of 3D models of plants is an important step for plant phenotyping, especially for monitoring architectural and morphological traits. Current state-of-the art approaches rely on hand-crafted 3D local features for modeling geometric variations in plant structures. While recent advancements in deep learning on point clouds have the potential of extracting relevant local and global characteristics, the scarcity of labeled 3D plant data impedes the exploration of this potential.

RESULTS

We adapted six recent point-based deep learning architectures (PointNet, PointNet++, DGCNN, PointCNN, ShellNet, RIConv) for segmentation of structural parts of rosebush models. We generated 3D synthetic rosebush models to provide adequate amount of labeled data for modification and pre-training of these architectures. To evaluate their performance on real rosebush plants, we used the ROSE-X data set of fully annotated point cloud models. We provided experiments with and without the incorporation of synthetic data to demonstrate the potential of point-based deep learning techniques even with limited labeled data of real plants.

CONCLUSION

The experimental results show that PointNet++ produces the highest segmentation accuracy among the six point-based deep learning methods. The advantage of PointNet++ is that it provides a flexibility in the scales of the hierarchical organization of the point cloud data. Pre-training with synthetic 3D models boosted the performance of all architectures, except for PointNet.

Using TLS-Measured Tree Attributes to Estimate Aboveground Biomass in Small Black Spruce Trees

Research Highlights: This study advances the effort to accurately estimate the biomass of trees in peatlands, which cover 13% of Canada’s land surface. Background and Objectives: Trees remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it as biomass. Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) has become a useful tool for modelling forest structure and estimating the above ground biomass (AGB) of trees. Allometric equations are often used to estimate individual tree AGB as a function of height and diameter at breast height (DBH), but these variables can often be laborious to measure using traditional methods. The main objective of this study was to develop allometric equations using TLS-measured variables and compare their accuracy with that of other widely used equations that rely on DBH. Materials and Methods: The study focusses on small black spruce trees (<5 m) located in peatland ecosystems of the Taiga Plains Ecozone in the Northwest Territories, Canada. Black spruce growing in peatlands are often stunted when compared to upland black spruce and having models specific to them would allow for more precise biomass estimates. One hundred small trees were destructively sampled from 10 plots and the dry weight of each tree was measured in the lab. With this reference data, we fitted biomass models specific to peatland black spruce using DBH, crown diameter, crown area, height, tree volume, and bounding box volume as predictors. Results: Our best models had crown size and height as predictors and outperformed established AGB equations that rely on DBH. Conclusions: Our equations are based on predictors that can be measured from above, and therefore they may enable the plotless creation of accurate biomass reference data for a prominent tree species in a common ecosystem (treed peatlands) in North America’s boreal.

Terrestrial laser scanning: a new standard of forest measuring and modelling?

BACKGROUND

Laser scanning technology has opened new horizons for the research of forest dynamics, because it provides a largely automated and non-destructive method to rapidly capture the structure of individual trees and entire forest stands at multiple spatial scales. The structural data themselves or in combination with additional remotely sensed data also provide information on the local physiological state of structures within trees. The capacity of new methods is facilitated by the ongoing development of automated processing tools that are designed to capture information from the point cloud data provided by the remote measurements.

SCOPE

Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS), performed from the ground or from unmanned aerial vehicles, in particular, has potential to become a unifying measurement standard for forest research questions, because the equipment is flexible to use in the field and has the capacity to capture branch-level structural information at the forestplot or even forest scale. This issue of Annals of Botany includes selected papers that exemplify the current and potential uses of TLS, such as for examination of crown interactions between trees, growth dynamics of mixed stands, non-destructive characterization of urban trees, and enhancement of ecological and evolutionary models. The papers also present current challenges in the applicability of TLS methods and report recent developments in methods facilitating the use of TLS data for research purposes, including automatic processing chains and quantifying branch and above-ground biomass. In this article, we provide an overview of the current and anticipated future capacity of TLS and related methods in solving questions that utilize measurements and models of forests.

CONCLUSIONS

Due to its measurement speed, TLS provides a method to effortlessly capture large amounts of detailed structural forest information, and consequent proxy data for tree and forest processes, at a far wider spatial scale than is feasible with manual measurements. Issues with measurement precision and occlusion of laser beams before they reach their target structures continue to reduce the accuracy of TLS data, but the limitations are counterweighted by the measurement speed that enables large sample sizes. The currently high time-cost of analysing TLS data, in turn, is likely to decrease through progress in automated processing methods. The developments point towards TLS becoming a new and widely accessible standard tool in forest measurement and modelling.