Hyperspectral imaging has a limited ability to remotely sense the onset of beech bark disease
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Insect and pathogen outbreaks have a major impact on northern forest ecosystems. Even for pathogens that have been present in a region for decades, such as beech bark disease (BBD), new waves of tree mortality are expected. Hence, there is a need for innovative approaches to monitor disease advancement in real time. Here, we test whether airborne hyperspectral imaging – involving data from 344 wavelengths in the visible, near infrared (NIR) and short‐wave infrared (SWIR) – can be used to assess beech bark disease severity in southern Quebec, Canada. Field data on disease severity were linked to airborne hyperspectral data for individual beech crowns. Partial least‐squares regression (PLSR) models using airborne imaging spectroscopy data predicted a small proportion of the variance in beech bark disease severity: the best model had an R 2 of only 0.09. Wavelengths with the strongest contributions were from the red‐edge region (~715 nm) and the SWIR (~1287 nm), which may suggest mediation by canopy greenness, water content, and canopy architecture. Similar models using hyperspectral data taken directly on individual leaves had no explanatory power ( R 2 = 0). In addition, airborne and leaf‐level hyperspectral datasets were uncorrelated. The failure of leaf‐level models suggests that canopy structure was likely responsible for the limited predictive ability of the airborne model. Somewhat better performance in predicting disease severity was found using common band ratios for canopy greenness assessment (e.g., the Green Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, gNDVI, and the Normalized Phaeophytinization Index, NPQI); these variables explained up to 19% of the variation in disease severity. Overall, we argue that the complexity of hyperspectral data is not necessary for assessing BBD spread and that spectral data in general may not provide an efficient means of improving BBD monitoring on a larger scale.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".