Application of UAV Photogrammetric System for Monitoring Ancient Tree Communities in Beijing

Abstract

Ancient tree community surveys have great scientific value to the study of biological resources, plant distribution, environmental change, genetic characteristics of species, and historical and cultural heritage. The largest ancient pear tree communities in China, which are rare, are located in the Daxing District of Beijing. However, the environmental conditions are tough, and the distribution is relatively dispersed. Therefore, a low-cost, high-efficiency, and high-precision measuring system is urgently needed to complete the survey of ancient tree communities. By unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) photogrammetric program research, ancient tree information extraction method research, and ancient tree diameter at breast height (DBH) and age prediction model research, the proposed method can realize the measurement of tree height, crown width, and prediction of DBH and tree age with low cost, high efficiency, and high precision. Through experiments and analysis, the root mean square error (RMSE) of the tree height measurement was 0.1814 m, the RMSE of the crown width measurement was 0.3292 m, the RMSE of the DBH prediction was 3.0039 cm, and the RMSE of the tree age prediction was 4.3753 years, which could meet the needs of ancient tree survey of the Daxing District Gardening and Greening Bureau. Therefore, a UAV photogrammetric measurement system proved to be capable when applied in the survey of ancient tree communities and even in partial forest inventories.

Plant phenotyping relevance

UAV写真測量による樹高・樹冠幅の測定とDBH・樹齢推定の手法開発および精度評価が研究の中心であり、樹木形態形質を直接推定するため含める。

Code and data availability

The supplied blocks describe UAV image acquisition, bundle adjustment software ('New UAV Bundle Adjustment'), LiDAR360 processing, and tree height/crown width/DBH/age measurements, but contain no public data deposit, no author code URL, and no supplement with datasets or models. The only URL present is the CC BY 4.0.0.

No evidence-backed public reproduction asset is currently recorded.