Model-Based Identification of Larix sibirica Ledeb. Damage Caused by Erannis jacobsoni Djak. Based on UAV Multispectral Features and Machine Learning

While unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) remote sensing technology has been successfully used in crop vegetation pest monitoring, a new approach to forest pest monitoring that can be replicated still needs to be explored. The aim of this study was to develop a model for identifying the degree of damage to forest trees caused by Erannis jacobsoni Djak. (EJD). By calculating UAV multispectral vegetation indices (VIs) and texture features (TF), the features sensitive to the degree of tree damage were extracted using the successive projections algorithm (SPA) and analysis of variance (ANOVA), and a one-dimensional convolutional neural network (1D-CNN), random forest (RF), and support vector machine (SVM) were used to construct damage degree recognition models. The overall accuracy (OA), Kappa, Macro-Recall (Rmacro), and Macro-F1 score (F1macro) of all models exceeded 0.8, and the best results were obtained for the 1D-CNN based on the vegetation index sensitive feature set (OA: 0.8950, Kappa: 0.8666, Rmacro: 0.8859, F1macro: 0.8839), while the SVM results based on both vegetation indices and texture features exhibited the poorest performance (OA: 0.8450, Kappa: 0.8082, Rmacro: 0.8415, F1macro: 0.8335). The results for the stand damage level identified by the models were generally consistent with the field survey results, but the results of SVMVIs+TF were poor. Overall, the 1D-CNN showed the best recognition performance, followed by the RF and SVM. Therefore, the results of this study can serve as an important and practical reference for the accurate and efficient identification of the damage level of forest trees attacked by EJD and for the scientific management of forest pests.