Assessing the effectiveness of UAV data for accurate coastal dune habitat mapping

Coastal dunes are considered some of the most threatened and vulnerable habitats in the European Union. Mapping the spatial distribution of these habitats is an essential task for their conservation. Advances in Unoccupied Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) facilitate the flexible acquisition of high-resolution imagery for identifying detailed spatial distributions of habitats within dune systems. This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of UAV remote sensing for mapping these habitat types. Specifically, we determined the impact of temporally acquired UAV-derived spectral and topographic information on classification accuracy. The work combined the multi-temporal UAV imagery with field observation data and used the Random Forest machine learning algorithm to classify dune habitats. Results showed that using multi-temporal UAV imagery increased classification accuracy compared to using uni-temporal UAV imagery (92.37% vs. 84.09%, respectively). Also, including topographic information consistently improved accuracy, regardless of the number of image sets used (the highest accuracy increased from 84.81% to 92.57% for a uni-temporal model). Temporal analyses showed that the data acquired in the middle period of the growing season were better than those acquired in the early or late periods. The methodology presented here demonstrates the potential of using UAV data for detailed mapping and monitoring of habitat types.

Automated summary

This study used UAV remote sensing technology to map the spatial distribution of coastal dune habitats. The results showed that using multi-temporal UAV imagery improved classification accuracy, and including topographic information consistently improved accuracy. The research demonstrates the potential of UAV data for detailed mapping and monitoring of habitat types.