Improving Deforestation Detection on Tropical Rainforests Using Sentinel-1 Data and Convolutional Neural Networks
Detecting early deforestation is a fundamental process in reducing forest degradation and carbon emissions. With this procedure, it is possible to monitor and control illegal activities associated with deforestation. Most regular monitoring projects have been recently proposed, but most of them rely...
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| Format: | Article |
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MDPI AG
2022-07-01
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| Series: | Remote Sensing |
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| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/14/14/3290 |
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| author | Mabel Ortega Adarme Juan Doblas Prieto Raul Queiroz Feitosa Cláudio Aparecido De Almeida |
| author_facet | Mabel Ortega Adarme Juan Doblas Prieto Raul Queiroz Feitosa Cláudio Aparecido De Almeida |
| author_sort | Mabel Ortega Adarme |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Detecting early deforestation is a fundamental process in reducing forest degradation and carbon emissions. With this procedure, it is possible to monitor and control illegal activities associated with deforestation. Most regular monitoring projects have been recently proposed, but most of them rely on optical imagery. In addition, these data are seriously restricted by cloud coverage, especially in tropical environments. In this regard, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is an attractive alternative that can fill this observational gap. This work evaluated and compared a conventional method based on time series and a Fully Convolutional Network (FCN) with bi-temporal SAR images. These approaches were assessed in two regions of the Brazilian Amazon to detect deforestation between 2019 and 2020. Different pre-processing techniques, including filtering and stabilization stages, were applied to the C-band Sentinel-1 images. Furthermore, this study proposes to provide the network with the distance map to past-deforestation as additional information to the pair of images being compared. In our experiments, this proposal brought up to 4% improvement in average precision. The experimental results further indicated a clear superiority of the DL approach over a time series-based deforestation detection method used as a baseline in all experiments. Finally, the study proved the benefits of pre-processing techniques when using detection methods based on time series. On the contrary, the analysis revealed that the neural network could eliminate noise from the input images, making filtering innocuous and, therefore, unnecessary. On the other hand, the stabilization of the input images brought non-negligible accuracy gains to the DL approach. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-09T05:59:39Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-600fd05bc3ad4fa5b42357d050a84f8b |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2072-4292 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-09T05:59:39Z |
| publishDate | 2022-07-01 |
| publisher | MDPI AG |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Remote Sensing |
| spelling | doaj.art-600fd05bc3ad4fa5b42357d050a84f8b2023-12-03T12:10:23ZengMDPI AGRemote Sensing2072-42922022-07-011414329010.3390/rs14143290Improving Deforestation Detection on Tropical Rainforests Using Sentinel-1 Data and Convolutional Neural NetworksMabel Ortega Adarme0Juan Doblas Prieto1Raul Queiroz Feitosa2Cláudio Aparecido De Almeida3Department of Electrical Engineering, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro 22451-900, BrazilNational Institute for Space Research (INPE), São Jose dos Campos, São Paulo 12227-010, BrazilDepartment of Electrical Engineering, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro 22451-900, BrazilNational Institute for Space Research (INPE), São Jose dos Campos, São Paulo 12227-010, BrazilDetecting early deforestation is a fundamental process in reducing forest degradation and carbon emissions. With this procedure, it is possible to monitor and control illegal activities associated with deforestation. Most regular monitoring projects have been recently proposed, but most of them rely on optical imagery. In addition, these data are seriously restricted by cloud coverage, especially in tropical environments. In this regard, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is an attractive alternative that can fill this observational gap. This work evaluated and compared a conventional method based on time series and a Fully Convolutional Network (FCN) with bi-temporal SAR images. These approaches were assessed in two regions of the Brazilian Amazon to detect deforestation between 2019 and 2020. Different pre-processing techniques, including filtering and stabilization stages, were applied to the C-band Sentinel-1 images. Furthermore, this study proposes to provide the network with the distance map to past-deforestation as additional information to the pair of images being compared. In our experiments, this proposal brought up to 4% improvement in average precision. The experimental results further indicated a clear superiority of the DL approach over a time series-based deforestation detection method used as a baseline in all experiments. Finally, the study proved the benefits of pre-processing techniques when using detection methods based on time series. On the contrary, the analysis revealed that the neural network could eliminate noise from the input images, making filtering innocuous and, therefore, unnecessary. On the other hand, the stabilization of the input images brought non-negligible accuracy gains to the DL approach.https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/14/14/3290deep learningdeforestation detectionstabilizationsynthetic aperture radartime seriestropical rainforest |
| spellingShingle | Mabel Ortega Adarme Juan Doblas Prieto Raul Queiroz Feitosa Cláudio Aparecido De Almeida Improving Deforestation Detection on Tropical Rainforests Using Sentinel-1 Data and Convolutional Neural Networks Remote Sensing deep learning deforestation detection stabilization synthetic aperture radar time series tropical rainforest |
| title | Improving Deforestation Detection on Tropical Rainforests Using Sentinel-1 Data and Convolutional Neural Networks |
| title_full | Improving Deforestation Detection on Tropical Rainforests Using Sentinel-1 Data and Convolutional Neural Networks |
| title_fullStr | Improving Deforestation Detection on Tropical Rainforests Using Sentinel-1 Data and Convolutional Neural Networks |
| title_full_unstemmed | Improving Deforestation Detection on Tropical Rainforests Using Sentinel-1 Data and Convolutional Neural Networks |
| title_short | Improving Deforestation Detection on Tropical Rainforests Using Sentinel-1 Data and Convolutional Neural Networks |
| title_sort | improving deforestation detection on tropical rainforests using sentinel 1 data and convolutional neural networks |
| topic | deep learning deforestation detection stabilization synthetic aperture radar time series tropical rainforest |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/14/14/3290 |
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