Mapping wheel-ruts from timber harvesting operations using deep learning techniques in drone imagery

Abstract

Abstract Wheel ruts, i.e. soil deformations caused by harvesting machines, are considered a negative environmental impact of forest operations and should be avoided or ameliorated. However, the mapping of wheel ruts that would be required to monitor harvesting operations and to plan amelioration measures is a tedious and time-consuming task. Here, we examined whether a combination of drone imagery and algorithms from the field of artificial intelligence can automate the mapping of wheel ruts. We used a deep-learning image-segmentation method (ResNet50 + UNet architecture) that was trained on drone imagery acquired shortly after harvests in Norway, where more than 160 km of wheel ruts were manually digitized. The cross-validation of the model based on 20 harvested sites resulted in F1 scores of 0.69–0.84 with an average of 0.77, and in total, 79 per cent of wheel ruts were correctly detected. The highest accuracy was obtained for severe wheel ruts (average user’s accuracy (UA) = 76 per cent), and the lowest accuracy was obtained for light wheel ruts (average UA = 67 per cent). Considering the nowadays ubiquitous availability of drones, the approach presented in our study has the potential to greatly increase the ability to effectively map and monitor the environmental impact of final felling operations with respect to wheel ruts. The automated mapping of wheel ruts may serve as an important input to soil impact analyses and thereby support measures to restore soil damages.