Deriving vegetation indices for phenology analysis using genetic programming

Author(s)

Almeida, Jurandy ; dos Santos, Jefersson A. ; Miranda, Waner O. ; Alberton, Bruna ; Morellato, Leonor Patricia C. ; Torres, Ricardo da S.

• Document type: Journal article
• Source: ECOLOGICAL INFORMATICS; v. 26, p. 9-pg., 2015-03-01.

Abstract

Plant phenology studies recurrent plant life cycle events and is a key component for understanding the impact of climate change. To increase accuracy of observations, new technologies have been applied for phenological observation, and one of the most successful strategies relies on the use of digital cameras, which are used as multi-channel imaging sensors to estimate color changes that are related to phenological events. We monitor leaf-changing patterns of a cerrado-savanna vegetation by taking daily digital images. We extract individual plant color information and correlate with leaf phenological changes. For that, several vegetation indices associated with plant species are exploited for both pattern analysis and knowledge extraction. In this paper, we present a novel approach for deriving appropriate vegetation indices from vegetation digital images. The proposed method is based on learning phenological patterns from plant species through a genetic programming framework. A comparative analysis of different vegetation indices is conducted and discussed. Experimental results show that our approach presents higher accuracy on characterizing plant species phenology. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 13/50169-1 - Towards an understanding of tipping points within tropical South American biomes
• Grantee: Ricardo da Silva Torres
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Research Partnership for Technological Innovation - PITE
• FAPESP's process: 13/50155-0 - Combining new technologies to monitor phenology from leaves to ecosystems
• Grantee: Leonor Patricia Cerdeira Morellato
• Support Opportunities: Research Program on Global Climate Change - University-Industry Cooperative Research (PITE)
• FAPESP's process: 10/52113-5 - e-phenology: the application of new technologies to monitor plant phenology and track climate changes in the tropics
• Grantee: Leonor Patricia Cerdeira Morellato
• Support Opportunities: Research Program on Global Climate Change - Regular Grants
• FAPESP's process: 14/00215-0 - Remote phenology and leaf exchange patterns towards a sazonality gradient
• Grantee: Bruna de Costa Alberton
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• FAPESP's process: 07/52015-0 - Approximation methods for visual computing
• Grantee: Jorge Stolfi
• Support Opportunities: Research Projects - Thematic Grants
• FAPESP's process: 10/51307-0 - Floristic diversity and seasonal patterns of rupestrian fields and cerrado
• Grantee: Leonor Patricia Cerdeira Morellato
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Research Partnership for Technological Innovation - PITE
• FAPESP's process: 09/18438-7 - Large-scale classification and retrieval for complex data
• Grantee: Ricardo da Silva Torres
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants