Vegetation ecological benefits index (VEBI): a 3D spatial model for evaluating the ecological benefits of vegetation

Urban population explosion may increase ecological environment discomfort, thereby affecting negatively humans' mental and physical performance. Therefore, it is important to detect and monitor vegetation and predict its ecological benefits. The complex composition of urban environment ground objects, such as steel roofs, plastic courts, and building shadows, significantly interferes with vegetation detection and monitoring. The optimized hyperspectral image-based vegetation index (OHSVI) constructed in this study effectively solves this problem. However, it is difficult to accurately predict the ecological benefits of vegetation based on the two-dimensional vegetation information extracted based on remote sensing images; this is related to the three-dimensional (3D) structure of vegetation and the 3D pattern of buildings. Therefore, we first proposed the vegetation ecological benefits index (VEBI) based on the 3D structure of vegetation to reveal how vegetation acts on its 3D surroundings. The method was tested in a playground, an academic building, and a parking space. The results showed that the vegetation extraction accuracy of the OHSVI exceeded 93%, which is better than that of the existing indices. Our findings suggest that VEBI may be efficient in predicting 3D vegetation ecological benefits combined with remote sensing and lidar datasets.

Automated summary

Urban population explosion can have a negative impact on humans' mental and physical performance due to ecological discomfort. Therefore, it is crucial to detect and monitor vegetation and predict its ecological benefits. The study introduces an optimized hyperspectral image-based vegetation index (OHSVI) to overcome the interference caused by the complex composition of urban ground objects. Additionally, a new vegetation ecological benefits index (VEBI) based on the 3D structure of vegetation is proposed for accurately predicting its ecological benefits in relation to surrounding buildings. The results show promising accuracy and suggest the efficiency of VEBI when combined with remote sensing and lidar datasets.