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Procedia Computer Science 219 (2023) 626–633

CENTERIS
CENTERIS –– International
International Conference
Conference on
on ENTERprise
ENTERprise Information
Information Systems
Systems // ProjMAN
ProjMAN ––
International Conference on Project MANagement / HCist – International Conference
International Conference on Project MANagement / HCist – International Conference on on Health
Health
and Social Care Information Systems and Technologies 2022
and Social Care Information Systems and Technologies 2022

Acacia dealbata classification from aerial imagery acquired using

unmanned aerial vehicles
Jorge
Jorge Pinto
Pintoa,, António
a
António Sousa
Sousaa,b,, Joaquim
a,b
Joaquim J.
J. Sousa
Sousaa,b
a,b, Emanuel Peresa,c
, Emanuel Peresa,c,, Luís
Luís Pádua
Páduaa,c,*
a,c,
*
aEngineering Department, School of Science and Technology, University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro (UTAD), 5000-801 Vila Real, Portugal
a
Engineering Department, School of Science and Technology, University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro (UTAD), 5000-801 Vila Real, Portugal
bCentre for Robotics in Industry and Intelligent Systems (CRIIS), INESC Technology and Science (INESC-TEC), 4200-465 Porto, Portugal
b
Centre for Robotics in Industry and Intelligent Systems (CRIIS), INESC Technology and Science (INESC-TEC), 4200-465 Porto, Portugal
cCentre for the Research and Technology of Agro-Environmental and Biological Sciences (CITAB), UTAD, 5000-801 Vila Real, Portugal
c
Centre for the Research and Technology of Agro-Environmental and Biological Sciences (CITAB), UTAD, 5000-801 Vila Real, Portugal

Abstract
Abstract

Non-native
Non-native plant
plant species
species can
can have
have aa negative
negative impact
impact inin the
the ecosystems
ecosystems and
and in
in local
local economies
economies when
when they
they spread
spread uncontrollably.
uncontrollably.
Monitoring
Monitoring tools can support their management and spread. In this paper, an exploratory approach is presented for
tools can support their management and spread. In this paper, an exploratory approach is presented for pixelwise
pixelwise
detection
detection of Acacia dealbata from UAV-based imagery acquired from RGB and multispectral sensors. Four machine learning
of Acacia dealbata from UAV-based imagery acquired from RGB and multispectral sensors. Four machine learning
algorithms
algorithms -- k-nearest
k-nearest neighbors
neighbors (KNN),
(KNN), random
random forest
forest (RF),
(RF), adaptive
adaptive boosting
boosting (AdaBoost)
(AdaBoost) and
and aa linear
linear kernel SVM (LSVM)
kernel SVM (LSVM) --
are trained
are trained using
using four
four datasets
datasets (hue,
(hue, saturation
saturation and
and value
value -- HSV,
HSV, multispectral
multispectral -- MSP,
MSP, RGB
RGB and
and aa combination
combination of of all
all features)
features) and
and
their classification performance is evaluated. RF classifier obtained the overall best performance, with an accuracy
their classification performance is evaluated. RF classifier obtained the overall best performance, with an accuracy above 86% in above 86% in
all data combinations, with LSVM showing the poorer results. Obtained results are encouraging for monitoring
all data combinations, with LSVM showing the poorer results. Obtained results are encouraging for monitoring invasive species invasive species
and can
and can serve
serve as
as aa base
base for
for future
future improvements
improvements to to detect
detect invasive
invasive species.
species.
© 2023
© 2022 The Authors.
2022 The Authors. Published
Authors. Published by
Published by ELSEVIER
by Elsevier
ELSEVIER B.V.B.V.
B.V.
BY-NC-ND
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0)
license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0)
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0)
Peer-review
Peer-review under
Peer-reviewunder responsibility
responsibilityofof
underresponsibility ofthethe
the scientific
scientific committee
committee
scientific committee of
of the
of the CENTERIS
CENTERIS
the CENTERIS –– International
– International Conference
Conference
International on
on ENTERprise
on ENTERprise
Conference Information
ENTERprise
Information
Systems Systems
/ ProjMAN
Information // ProjMAN
ProjMAN --Conference
Systems- International International
International onConference on
on Project
Project /MANagement
Project MANagement
Conference // HCist
HCist - International
MANagement -- International
HCistConference Conference
on Health
International on
and Social
Conference on Care
Health and
Information Social Care
Systems and Information
Technologies Systems
2022 and Technologies
Health and Social Care Information Systems and Technologies 2022 2022
Keywords: machine learning;
Keywords: machine learning; invasive
invasive plant
plant species;
species; HSV;
HSV; multispectral
multispectral imagery;
imagery; geographical
geographical information
information systems.
systems.

*
* Corresponding
Corresponding author.
author. Tel.:
Tel.: +351-259-350-151 (Ext. 4151).
+351-259-350-151 (Ext. 4151).
E-mail address:
E-mail luispadua@utad.pt
address: luispadua@utad.pt

1877-0509
1877-0509 ©© 2022
2022 The
The Authors.
Authors. Published
Published byby ELSEVIER
ELSEVIER B.V.
B.V.
This
This is
is an
an open
open access
access article
article under
under the
the CC
CC BY-NC-ND
BY-NC-ND license
license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0)
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0)
Peer-review
Peer-review under
under responsibility
responsibility of
of the
the scientific
scientific committee
committee of
of the
the CENTERIS
CENTERIS –– International
International Conference
Conference on
on ENTERprise
ENTERprise Information
Information Systems
Systems //
ProjMAN
ProjMAN -- International
International Conference
Conference on on Project
Project MANagement
MANagement // HCist
HCist -- International
International Conference
Conference on
on Health
Health and
and Social
Social Care
Care Information
Information Systems
Systems
and
and Technologies
Technologies 2022
2022
1877-0509 © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0)
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the CENTERIS – International Conference on ENTERprise
Information Systems / ProjMAN - International Conference on Project MANagement / HCist - International Conference
on Health and Social Care Information Systems and Technologies 2022
10.1016/j.procs.2023.01.332
 Jorge Pinto et al. / Procedia Computer Science 219 (2023) 626–633 627
2 Jorge Pinto et al. / Procedia Computer Science 00 (2019) 000–000

1. Introduction

The introduction of non-native plant species can cause different effects on new ecosystems, with variable rate
impacts. Indeed, while some species do not introduce any negative effect on the natural ecosystem dynamics, others
might, especially if they have an uncontrolled or fast spread beyond the original place of introduction [1]. Furthermore,
there can also be socioeconomic impacts and biodiversity loss. Native from Tasmania (Australia), Acacia dealbata is
a shrub or small tree with evergreen foliage, flowering in late winter/early spring in the form of yellow flowers. It
speeds through its rhizomes and seeds and can easily resprout after being cut and with the occurrence of rural fires
Acacia dealbata population may increase significantly [2]. Currently, most Acacia spp. are subjected to legislation
aimed at controlling invasive species and prohibiting their further use and planting [3,4]. As other invasive species,
Acacia dealbata can present itself in areas with difficult ground access, due both to topography and remote
accessibility. Therefore, efficient methods to monitor the spread of Acacia dealbata are required and remote sensing
is among them. In fact, different remote sensing platforms, data and product types, and geographical information
systems (GIS) are currently applied for monitoring Acacia spp. invasions.
Regarding studies using satellite and airborne remote sensed data, Viana and Aranha [5] performed a comparison
between mapped Acacia dealbata in the Viseu region (central Portugal) using two classifiers: maximum likelihood
and minimum distance to means classifier (MDMC). Martins et al. [6], monitored the presence of Acacia dealbata in
central-eastern Portugal, in flowering and dry seasons and three supervised machine learning (ML) classifiers were
evaluated: maximum likelihood, support vector machine (SVM) and artificial neural network (ANN). Raposo et al.
[7] evaluated the invasiveness of Acacia dealbata in a slope area in Seia, Portugal. A temporal collection of orthophoto
maps was interpreted to retrieve equations for the annual linear increment and annual invasiveness rate. The 20-year
projection presented enabled to improve management planning and to adopt effective control measures. Mesemola et
al. [8] explored the constant satellite monitoring to inspect the optimal time periods and features to detect Acacia
species (A. dealbata and A. mearnsii) in South Africa using Sentinel-2, enabling to establish the most suitable periods
to detect these species when using vegetation indices or spectral bands. Spracklen and Spracklen [9] evaluated the
individual and combined use of Sentinel-1 (SAR) and Sentinel-2 data to distinguish natural forest from acacia
plantations (Acacia mangium and clonal A. mangium x A. auriculiformis hybrid) and to determine its age in north-
central Vietnam. Data was divided into polygons using object-based image analysis (OBIA) and those were used in a
RF.
Given the cost-effectiveness, accessibility and flexibility of unmanned aerial systems [10], some authors used the
potential of data acquired from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to establish a connection with satellite data, to map
greater extents for the identification of infested areas [11] or to cross-compare detection effectiveness between UAV
and satellite data [12]. However, several authors conducted classification tasks by using only UAV-based data from
different sensors, being RGB the most used. In this context, Lehmann et al. [13] used UAV-based RGB and CIR
imagery to identify Acacia mangium in a Brazilian savanna ecosystem. A minimum distance classification algorithm,
based on Eulinean spectral distance, was applied in the RGB orthophoto mosaic, to classify between different classes
(shadow, bare soil, road, Acacia mangium, grass and other vegetation). Melville et al. [14] performed the classification
of lowland Australian native grassland communities using hyperspectral data and digital surface models. The data was
divided in a set of polygons through OBIA and were classified using a RF into one soil class and four vegetation
classes (including Acacia dealbata). Guerra-Hernández et al. [15] used UAV-based vegetation indices computed from
multispectral imagery, along with texture features from normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) [16] and
elevation features from RGB imagery for monitoring health status of riparian forests, being able to distinguish between
asymptomatic, defoliated and dead trees. Marzialetti [17] mapped Acacia saligna invasion along a Mediterranean
coastal dune in central Italy using UAV-based data acquired in pre-flowering and flowering stages. OBIA was applied
in RGB, NDVI and HSV (hue, saturation, value) and digital surface model (DSM) were used as features to train a
random forest classifier. Using UAV-based RGB imagery, Gonçalves et al. [18] performed the automatic detection of
Acacia longifolia, in three different sites, in Portugal. The UAV-based images were labeled according to nine classes:
Acacia, non-acacia yellow shrubs, cork oak, short herbs, wood, pine trees, other vegetation, dirt and roadway. A
simple convolutional neural network was designed and was trained to classify the nine labeled classes and to
distinguish Acacia longifolia from other classes. De Sá et al. [19] evaluated the suitability of UAV-based imagery as
a cost-effective approach to monitor the impacts of a biocontrol agent in Acacia longifolia in central-northern Portugal.
Fernandes et al. [20] combined field data and UAV multispectral imagery to perform carbon stock estimations in a
Mediterranean riparian forest.
628 Jorge Pinto et al. / Procedia Computer Science 219 (2023) 626–633
Jorge Pinto et al. / Procedia Computer Science 00 (2019) 000–000 3

Considering the previously published studies, the aim of this work is to explore the potential of UAV-based imagery
acquired using both RGB and multispectral sensors, to detect Acacia dealbata presence at the pixel-level. To
accomplish this goal, several features were extracted from both types of data and different combinations from those
features were used in the training of machine learning classifiers. The trained models were validated and were used to
classify the presence of the Acacia dealbata within the study area.

2. Materials and methods

2.1. Study area description

An area infested by Acacia dealbata was selected for this work (Fig. 1). It is located in the outskirts of the campus
of University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro (Vila Real, Portugal). The study area is surrounded by a national route
(N313), a rural primitive road and by vineyards and small farmlands in the near vicinity. Apart from Acacia dealbata,
within the monitored area (red polygon in Fig. 1), there are other trees and shrub communities including Pinus pinaster
and Eucalyptus globulus specimens, along with grassland and lowland vegetation, bare soil, walls and human-made
infrastructures.

Fig. 1. Study area overview, with the area intended to be classified in the red polygon.

To classify the presence of this invasive species in each pixel of the UAV-based data within the study area, several
steps were followed (Fig. 2), which are described in the following sections.

Fig. 2. General flowchart with the main methodological steps, from data acquisition to Acacia dealbata classification.

2.2. UAV data acquisition and photogrammetric processing

Data was acquired using a multi-rotor UAV (Phantom 4, DJI, Shenzhen, China) by carrying two sensors: a 12 MP
RGB sensor, attached to a 3-axis gimbal, and a multispectral sensor (SEQUOIA, PARROT, Paris, France), capable
of acquiring data in green, red, red-edge and near infrared parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.
 Jorge Pinto et al. / Procedia Computer Science 219 (2023) 626–633 629
4 Jorge Pinto et al. / Procedia Computer Science 00 (2019) 000–000

A flight height of 90 m was planned to cover 11 hectares. The flight mission was performed during the morning of
February 2nd, 2022, with a 90% frontal overlap between images, a 70% side overlap for RGB imagery and 80% overall
image overlap for the multispectral data. A total of 229 images were acquired from the RGB sensor and 684
(corresponding to 171 different captures, producing one image per band) from the multispectral sensor.
Acquired images from each sensor were individually subjected to photogrammetric processing using Pix4Dmapper
Pro (Pix4D SA, Lausanne, Switzerland). This automatic procedure allowed to produce several orthorectified raster
outputs as digital elevation models (DEMs) and orthophoto mosaics from the RGB imagery, as well as radiometric
calibrated bands and vegetation indices from the multispectral sensor. In this work, only the RGB orthophoto mosaic,
the radiometric calibrated bands (green, red, red-edge and NIR) and NDVI were used.

2.3. Dataset creation

The created orthorectified raster products were imported to an open-source GIS (QGIS) and other products were
computed, using the raster calculator tool, and other functions from GRASS [21], Orfeo ToolBox [22] and QGIS
itself. The RGB orthophoto mosaic was converted to another color space HSV (hue, saturation and value) and red,
green and blue bands were also normalized by dividing each one of the three bands by the sum of them all. Thus, in
total, there were 11 bands available: the four spectral bands acquired using the multispectral sensor (green, red, red-
edge and NIR) and the NDVI; from the RGB data, the normalized red, green and blue bands along with hue, saturation
and value from the HSV color space. The computed bands were divided into four different datasets: (1) the three
normalized bands from the RGB orthophoto mosaic; (2) HSV mosaic converted from the RGB data; (3) the four
multispectral bands along with the NDVI; and (4) all 11 features computed from the data of both sensors. The bands
used as features of each dataset were concatenated in different raster products and its spatial resolution was sampled
to 0.5 m.

2.4. Classification procedure

To train the different classifiers used in this work, a set of points were evenly distributed throughout the study area.
This was achieved by placing a set of 289 polygons of 5 × 5 m from which 102 in acacia areas and 187 in other areas,
to cover the most diverse situations. Then, a set of 50 random points inside each 5 × 5 m polygon was generated, with
a minimum distance of 0.5 m between them. From these random points - some of those corresponding to Acacia
dealbata areas – a few had to be slightly moved or even eliminated, because they were strongly affected by shadows.
It is known that shadows can significantly affect the results, even when included during model calibration [23]. This
procedure was achieved by creating a binary mask to discard pixel values with digital numbers lower than 60 in the
red and blue bands of the RGB orthophoto mosaic. A final number of 10678 points were generated, from which 1335
belong to the Acacia dealbata class and, 9343 belong to other elements present in the area under study. Due to the
strong class imbalance - only 12.5% to Acacia dealbata - some non-acacia areas points had to be discarded. Thus,
1300 points for each class were randomly selected (2600 in total), for feature extraction of the datasets, with 1000
points per class being used for training and 600 (300 per class) for performance evaluation.
To perform a pixel-level classification of Acacia presence in the study area, different classifiers were evaluated,
namely: k-nearest neighbors (KNN), RF, adaptive boosting (AdaBoost) and a linear kernel SVM (LSVM). The
selection of these classifiers was based on the differences in implementation and data analysis mechanism. In the case
of KNN, the number of neighbors used was 32. The RF parameters were set to maximum tree depth of five, a minimum
of 10 samples in each node, a maximum number of 100 trees in the forest, and an out-of-bag error of 0.01. The
AdaBoost method was based on an adaptation of a discrete AdaBoost algorithm to support real values and was
parameterized to have 100 weak classifiers, a weight trim rate of 0.95 and a maximum depth of one tree. The linear
kernel SVM was used with a value of one set to the cost parameter. The classifiers were individually trained for the
four different data combinations (HSV, MSP, RGB and all bands).
Classifiers’ performance in each dataset combination was evaluated through the confusion matrix obtained from
the classification of the 600 validation points. The following metrics were computed: user’s accuracy (UA), producer’s
accuracy (PA), kappa coefficient (K), and overall accuracy (OA). Moreover, the classification results over the study
area were also visually and quantitatively assessed.
630 Jorge Pinto et al. / Procedia Computer Science 219 (2023) 626–633
Jorge Pinto et al. / Procedia Computer Science 00 (2019) 000–000 5

3. Results and discussion

3.1. Data characterization

To understand the differences between the different features computed for this work, the distribution of the 2000
points used to train the ML classifiers in each feature was computed (Fig. 3.). When directly comparing both classes,
some features stands out for one of them. In the normalized bands from the RGB orthophoto mosaic, points located
in Acacia dealbata areas present values slightly above the other elements present in the study area in the green and
red normalized bands, while the inverse is verified in the blue band. HSV color space presents greater differences
between the values of both classes, with hue having lower values in the Acacia class, while saturation and value bands
tend to present higher values in the Acacia class than in other elements. In the multispectral data, green and red bands
present, respectively, similar and slightly lower reflectance values when comparing Acacia class with other elements,
while red-edge and NIR bands mostly have higher values in points located in Acacia dealbata areas. The same occurs
with NDVI, were values from Acacia class tend to be higher. The lower hue values in Acacia areas can be explained
by this band being related to pixel color. This accounts for points from the class “others” being spread throughout
different elements in the study area and its surroundings, contributing to a wider range of values. This explanation is
also valid for the greater distribution obtained in other elements.

Fig. 3. Data distribution of each extracted feature for Acacia dealbtada and other elements present in the study area. Values obtained from 2000
points, evenly distributed in the two classes.

3.2. Classifiers’ performance

After the training stage of each classifier, the obtained models were validated using 600 points evenly distributed
among the two classes. As mentioned in Section 2.4. several metrics were obtained from the confusion matrix. These
results are presented in Table 1. Different performances were obtained, depending on the classifier or dataset used.
The overall accuracy was always higher than 75%. When observing this parameter, it can be stated that the poorest
results are obtained when using only multispectral-based features (mean of 82.7%). Similar results had been already
reported for vineyard classification [24]. It is followed by HSV and RGB, with the best performance being achieved
when using features present in the dataset. Regarding the performance of each classifier, LSVM obtained the lowest
overall accuracy of all datasets. This value was lower than 80% when using only multispectral or HSV features, which
was also reported in Martins et al. [6]. On the other hand, RF revealed to be the most stable performance in the different
tested data combinations, achieving an overall accuracy higher than 86%. However, when considering the use of all
features, AdaBoost presented the highest overall accuracy (89.3%) while RF is 88.5%. AdaBoost also presents a
higher kappa value and a similar F1-score. In the remaining datasets, AdaBoost and KNN show a similar performance
when being trained with the multispectral features, while KNN presents a slightly higher overall accuracy when using
RGB or HSV features.
In other studies, similar results were obtained when using satellite data (89% [5] and 86% [6], 87% [9]), but when
using Sentinel-2 data a high overall accuracy of 92,5% was reported [9]. Other studies using UAV-based data shown
a lower overall accuracy, as in Lehmann et al. [13] (85.4%) and Melville et al. [14] (71.8%), with Acacia class
 Jorge Pinto et al. / Procedia Computer Science 219 (2023) 626–633 631
6 Jorge Pinto et al. / Procedia Computer Science 00 (2019) 000–000

obtaining 92.6 user’s accuracy and 41.9 producer’s accuracy. Marzialetti et al. [17] reached a best performance in the
flowering period with the combination of DSM and HSV (93% overall accuracy in pre-flowering period and 95% in
the flowering period) to map Acacia saligna. When using CNNs, accuracies seem to improve to over 95% [18].
However, most studies were conducted in other environments with distinct vegetation and spatial resolutions.

Table 1. Validation results of the models created by the evaluated classifiers for the different sets of data. Precision, recall
and F1-score values are reported for the Acacia class. RGB: red, green, blue; HSV: hue, saturation and value; MSP:
multispectral; ALL: using all features; OA: overall accuracy; BOOST: AdaBoost; LSVM: linear support vector machine;
KNN: k-nearest neighbors RF: random forest.
Data Method Precision Recall F1-score Kappa OA
BOOST 0.83 0.91 0.87 0.73 0.86
LSVM 0.79 0.89 0.84 0.65 0.83
RGB
KNN 0.85 0.90 0.87 0.73 0.87
RF 0.85 0.92 0.89 0.76 0.88
BOOST 0.84 0.83 0.83 0.67 0.84
LSVM 0.77 0.80 0.79 0.56 0.78
HSV
KNN 0.82 0.90 0.86 0.70 0.85
RF 0.86 0.88 0.87 0.74 0.87
BOOST 0.80 0.90 0.85 0.68 0.84
LSVM 0.71 0.89 0.79 0.53 0.77
MSP
KNN 0.80 0.90 0.85 0.68 0.84
RF 0.82 0.92 0.87 0.72 0.86
BOOST 0.90 0.89 0.89 0.79 0.89
LSVM 0.83 0.86 0.85 0.69 0.84
ALL
KNN 0.84 0.92 0.88 0.75 0.88
RF 0.87 0.90 0.89 0.77 0.89

3.3. Acacia dealbata classification

Using the models obtained from classifiers’ training, the presence of Acacia dealbata in the study area can be
assessed in a pixelwise classification. Fig. 4 presents the results of the RF models with the different datasets.
Misclassification errors, with more or less noticeability, were transversal to all data combinations. Cases of Acacia
dealbata misclassification were observed in grass, small shrubs, canopy boarders of some pinus pinaster, and the
canopy of some deciduous trees. On the other hand, young Acacia dealbata shrubs were not classified. Although
misclassification errors are present in all datasets, the multispectral data seemed to be more prone to this, while RGB
normalized bands shown a higher error prominence in shadow areas.
Acacia dealbata classification results can be improved by exploring other approaches. Individual tree crown
extraction could be evaluated as in Guerra-Hernández et al. [15], and height information from DEMs can be used to
discard elements using an height threshold. Instead of binary classification, more classes can be used [13,14,18,24]
such as soil, lowland vegetation, other tree species. Increasing the number of vegetation indices can also be considered
to improve results from multispectral data [8]. All these changes can allow the retrieval of a set of features for each
estimated tree/shrub, enabling to discard soil parts present in the images. As seen in other studies [8], time-series
satellite data can help in understanding the spectral and spatial dynamics of Acacia dealbata and serve as a way for
large-scale monitoring of this species and UAV-based imagery can be the ground-truth to train satellite data [9,25].
632 Jorge Pinto et al. / Procedia Computer Science 219 (2023) 626–633
Jorge Pinto et al. / Procedia Computer Science 00 (2019) 000–000 7

Fig. 4. Acacia dealbata classification (yellow pixels) from the random forest classifier using the different types of data: RGB normalized bands;
hue, saturation and value (HSV); multispectral bands the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI); and the combination of all features.

4. Conclusions

The potential of UAV-based imagery, acquired using both RGB and multispectral sensors, to detect Acacia
dealbata presence at the pixel-level was presented in this work. Obtained imagery from the studied area was processed,
and the computed bands were combined resulting in a set of four different datasets (HSV, MSP, RGB and all bands).
To perform a pixel-level classification, four different classifiers were evaluated: KNN, RF, AdaBoost and LSVM. The
classifiers were individually trained in each dataset and their performance was evaluated using validation points. When
comparing the different classifiers, RF revealed the most stable performance in the four datasets, even when
considering misclassification errors. To reduce observed errors, other approaches can be explored to complement the
proposed approach: individual tree crown extraction, OBIA, height information from DEMs, multi-class classification
and increasing the number of vegetation indices. Nevertheless, despite the obtained results, this methodology should
be tested at different periods throughout the year. This will enable not only to assess what is the most suitable period
to detect Acacia dealbata, but also to perform multi-temporal vegetative monitoring and to possibly include this
methodology into an automatic processing pipeline

Acknowledgements

This research activity was supported by national funds through FCT (Portuguese Foundation for Science and
Technology) under the projects UIDB/04033/2020 and Innov4Agro (LA/P/0126/2020).

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