Machine learning assisted remote forestry health assessment: a comprehensive state of the art review

Front Plant Sci. 2023 Jun 2:14:1139232. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2023.1139232. eCollection 2023.

Abstract

Forests are suffering water stress due to climate change; in some parts of the globe, forests are being exposed to the highest temperatures historically recorded. Machine learning techniques combined with robotic platforms and artificial vision systems have been used to provide remote monitoring of the health of the forest, including moisture content, chlorophyll, and nitrogen estimation, forest canopy, and forest degradation, among others. However, artificial intelligence techniques evolve fast associated with the computational resources; data acquisition, and processing change accordingly. This article is aimed at gathering the latest developments in remote monitoring of the health of the forests, with special emphasis on the most important vegetation parameters (structural and morphological), using machine learning techniques. The analysis presented here gathered 108 articles from the last 5 years, and we conclude by showing the newest developments in AI tools that might be used in the near future.

Keywords: forestry health assessment; machine learning; remote sensing; spectral information; vision system.

Publication types

  • Review

Grants and funding

This work was funded by ANID SCIA ANILLO ACT210052, ANID FB008 21231129, ANID basal center AC3E, and the Direction of Postgrade Program of Federico Santamaria, Technical University.