Machine learning for underwater laser detection and differentiation of macroalgae and coral

A better understanding of how spatial distribution patterns in important primary producers and ecosystem service providers such as macroalgae and coral are affected by climate-change and human activity-related events can guide us in anticipating future community and ecosystem response. In-person underwater field surveys are essential in capturing fine and/or subtle details but are rarely simple to orchestrate over large spatial scale (e.g., hundreds of km). In this work, we develop an automated spectral classifier for detection and classification of various macroalgae and coral species through a spectral response dataset acquired in a controlled setting and via an underwater multispectral laser serial imager. Transferable to underwater lidar detection and imaging methods, laser line scanning is known to perform in various types of water in which normal photography and/or video methods may be affected by water optical properties. Using off the shelf components, we show how reflectance and fluorescence responses can be useful in differentiating algal color groups and certain coral genera. Results indicate that while macroalgae show many different genera and species for which differentiation by their spectral response alone would be difficult, it can be reduced to a three color-type/class spectral response problem. Our results suggest that the three algal color groups may be differentiated by their fluorescence response at 580 nm and 685 nm using common 450 nm, 490 nm and 520 nm laser sources, and potentially a subset of these spectral bands would show similar accuracy. There are however classification errors between green and brown types, as they both depend on Chl-a fluorescence response. Comparatively, corals are also very diverse in genera and species, and reveal possible differentiable spectral responses between genera, form (i.e., soft vs. hard), partly related to their emission in the 685 nm range and other shorter wavelengths. Moreover, overlapping substrates and irregular edges are shown to contribute to classification error. As macroalgae are represented worldwide and share similar photopigment assemblages within respective color classes, inter color-class differentiability would apply irrespective of their provenance. The same principle applies to corals, where excitation-emission characteristics should be unchanged from experimental response when investigated in-situ.

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