Combining Multi-Season Multispectral Imagery and Airborne Laser Scanning Data to Improve Predicted Quercus garryana Distribution
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Garry oak ecosystems are one of North America's most distinctive and ecologically significant ecosystems. Currently, only 1–5% of their historical extent remains in near-natural condition. Effective conservation requires accurate information on Garry oak distribution and forest composition. Remote sensing and machine learning offer advantages over traditional methods in terms of resources and scalability. Spectral similarities with co-occurring species, rarity, and subcanopy growth present challenges in transitional forests. Previous studies have found incorporating light detection and ranging (LiDAR) and multi-season data to be advantageous in tree species classification compared to single season imagery. This research evaluates the effect of including multi-season LiDAR data and imagery on the accuracy of Garry oak identification in a random forest classification of a mixed broadleaf and coniferous forest on Vancouver Island, Canada. LiDAR improved overall accuracy by 5.21%, Garry oak producer accuracy by 19%, and user accuracy by 7.67% on average compared to imagery alone. The impact of seasonality was less clear. On average, classifications using leaf-on LiDAR outperformed multi-season and leaf-off LiDAR, while spring imagery, followed by multi-season imagery, performed best. However, that was not consistently true. Seasonality of inputs significantly impacted misclassification patterns and final proportion of predicted species. These findings highlight the benefits of integrating LiDAR data in classifications to identify Garry oaks. Further research on the impact of species composition and phenology could help optimize data acquisition timing.
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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) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| 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".