High-resolution RGB imagery acquired from low-altitude UAV surveys was processed through a modular pipeline incorporating transformer-based semantic segmentation, connected-component vegetation extraction, fine-grained species classification using a ConvNeXt architecture, and grid-based dominance scoring at 2x2m resolution.
The framework targeted two ecologically significant halophytic grasses, Spartina maritima and Puccinellia maritima, and was trained using curated and manually annotated UAV imagery, along with biodiversity imagery sourced from publicly accessible datasets.
To identify these plants from the imagery, our segmentation yielded reliable species masks (mean IoU = 0.56; pixel-level accuracy = 0.96), while object-level classification achieved very good discrimination (F1 = 0.99).
Dominance estimates closely matched quadrat-based field surveys, with mean absolute differences below 8%, preserving fine-scale spatial structure under realistic survey conditions.
The developed system, named EcoVision, establishes a practical foundation for scalable, high-resolution salt marsh monitoring, demonstrating how AI-driven workflows can translate pixel-level predictions into ecologically interpretable metrics.
Blogger's Review: The architecture of EcoVision showcases how the integration of drone technology and AI can significantly enhance the precision and efficiency of ecological monitoring, particularly in unique ecosystems like salt marshes, providing robust technical support for ecological conservation.