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Precision Detection and Assessment of Ash Death and Decline Caused by the Emerald Ash Borer Using Drones and Deep Learning

Emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis) is an invasive pest that has killed millions of ash trees (Fraxinus spp.) in the USA since its first detection in 2002. Although the current methods for trapping emerald ash borers (e.g., sticky traps and trap trees) and visual ground and aerial surveys are ge...

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Autores principales: Valicharla, Sruthi Keerthi, Li, Xin, Greenleaf, Jennifer, Turcotte, Richard, Hayes, Christopher, Park, Yong-Lak
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9964414/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36840146
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants12040798
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author Valicharla, Sruthi Keerthi
Li, Xin
Greenleaf, Jennifer
Turcotte, Richard
Hayes, Christopher
Park, Yong-Lak
author_facet Valicharla, Sruthi Keerthi
Li, Xin
Greenleaf, Jennifer
Turcotte, Richard
Hayes, Christopher
Park, Yong-Lak
author_sort Valicharla, Sruthi Keerthi
collection PubMed
description Emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis) is an invasive pest that has killed millions of ash trees (Fraxinus spp.) in the USA since its first detection in 2002. Although the current methods for trapping emerald ash borers (e.g., sticky traps and trap trees) and visual ground and aerial surveys are generally effective, they are inefficient for precisely locating and assessing the declining and dead ash trees in large or hard-to-access areas. This study was conducted to develop and evaluate a new tool for safe, efficient, and precise detection and assessment of ash decline and death caused by emerald ash borer by using aerial surveys with unmanned aerial systems (a.k.a., drones) and a deep learning model. Aerial surveys with drones were conducted to obtain 6174 aerial images including ash decline in the deciduous forests in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, USA. The ash trees in each image were manually annotated for training and validating deep learning models. The models were evaluated using the object recognition metrics: mean average precisions (mAP) and two average precisions (AP50 and AP75). Our comprehensive analyses with instance segmentation models showed that Mask2former was the most effective model for detecting declining and dead ash trees with 0.789, 0.617, and 0.542 for AP50, AP75, and mAP, respectively, on the validation dataset. A follow-up in-situ field study conducted in nine locations with various levels of ash decline and death demonstrated that deep learning along with aerial survey using drones could be an innovative tool for rapid, safe, and efficient detection and assessment of ash decline and death in large or hard-to-access areas.
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spelling pubmed-99644142023-02-26 Precision Detection and Assessment of Ash Death and Decline Caused by the Emerald Ash Borer Using Drones and Deep Learning Valicharla, Sruthi Keerthi Li, Xin Greenleaf, Jennifer Turcotte, Richard Hayes, Christopher Park, Yong-Lak Plants (Basel) Article Emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis) is an invasive pest that has killed millions of ash trees (Fraxinus spp.) in the USA since its first detection in 2002. Although the current methods for trapping emerald ash borers (e.g., sticky traps and trap trees) and visual ground and aerial surveys are generally effective, they are inefficient for precisely locating and assessing the declining and dead ash trees in large or hard-to-access areas. This study was conducted to develop and evaluate a new tool for safe, efficient, and precise detection and assessment of ash decline and death caused by emerald ash borer by using aerial surveys with unmanned aerial systems (a.k.a., drones) and a deep learning model. Aerial surveys with drones were conducted to obtain 6174 aerial images including ash decline in the deciduous forests in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, USA. The ash trees in each image were manually annotated for training and validating deep learning models. The models were evaluated using the object recognition metrics: mean average precisions (mAP) and two average precisions (AP50 and AP75). Our comprehensive analyses with instance segmentation models showed that Mask2former was the most effective model for detecting declining and dead ash trees with 0.789, 0.617, and 0.542 for AP50, AP75, and mAP, respectively, on the validation dataset. A follow-up in-situ field study conducted in nine locations with various levels of ash decline and death demonstrated that deep learning along with aerial survey using drones could be an innovative tool for rapid, safe, and efficient detection and assessment of ash decline and death in large or hard-to-access areas. MDPI 2023-02-10 /pmc/articles/PMC9964414/ /pubmed/36840146 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants12040798 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Valicharla, Sruthi Keerthi
Li, Xin
Greenleaf, Jennifer
Turcotte, Richard
Hayes, Christopher
Park, Yong-Lak
Precision Detection and Assessment of Ash Death and Decline Caused by the Emerald Ash Borer Using Drones and Deep Learning
title Precision Detection and Assessment of Ash Death and Decline Caused by the Emerald Ash Borer Using Drones and Deep Learning
title_full Precision Detection and Assessment of Ash Death and Decline Caused by the Emerald Ash Borer Using Drones and Deep Learning
title_fullStr Precision Detection and Assessment of Ash Death and Decline Caused by the Emerald Ash Borer Using Drones and Deep Learning
title_full_unstemmed Precision Detection and Assessment of Ash Death and Decline Caused by the Emerald Ash Borer Using Drones and Deep Learning
title_short Precision Detection and Assessment of Ash Death and Decline Caused by the Emerald Ash Borer Using Drones and Deep Learning
title_sort precision detection and assessment of ash death and decline caused by the emerald ash borer using drones and deep learning
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9964414/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36840146
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants12040798
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