Screening of identification algorithm for rodent-induced bare patches based on the drone imagery

Rodent-infested bald spots are crucial indicators of rodent infestation in grasslands. Leveraging Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) remote sensing technology for discerning detrimental bald spots among plateau pikas has significant implications for assessing associated ecological hazards. Based on UAV-visible light imagery, we classified and recognized the characteristics of plateau pika habitats with five supervised classification algorithms, i.e., minimum distance classification (MinD), maximum likelihood classification (ML), support vector machine classification (SVM), Mahalanobis distance classification (MD), and neural network classification (NN) . The accuracy of the five methods was evaluated using a confusion matrix. Results showed that NN and SVM exhibited superior performance than other methods in identifying and classifying features indicative of plateau pika habitats. The mapping accuracy of NN for grassland and bald spots was 98.1% and 98.5%, respectively, with corresponding user accuracy was 98.8% and 97.7%. The overall model accuracy was 98.3%, with a Kappa coefficient of 0.97, reflecting minimal misclassification and omission errors. Through practical verification, NN exhibited good stability. In conclusion, the neural network method was suitable for identifying rodent-damaged bald spots within alpine meadows.