Evaluation of Features Derived from High-Resolution Multispectral Imagery and LiDAR Data for Object-Based Support Vector Machine Classification of Tree Species

Remote sensing can play a key role in understanding the make-up of urban forests. This study analyzes how high-resolution Geoeye-1 multispectral imagery and LiDAR point clouds allow for improved classification of urban tree species using object-based and support vector machine classification (SVM). Five common urban trees are classified: Acer platanoides; Acer platanoides ‘Schwedleri’; Picea pungens; Gleditsia triacanthos; and Tilia cordata. Numerous features are used for classification: index derived from imagery reflectance; texture of imagery; LiDAR height and intensity; and a LiDAR-generated normalized digital surface model. Classification is performed to evaluate the contribution of individual features, groups of features, and the combination of features from both imagery and LiDAR data. Classification results in an overall accuracy of 85.08% when features from both data sources are combined, compared with 77.73% when using only LiDAR features, and 71.85% when using only imagery features