Yusha Zhang

The spectral variation hypothesis (SVH) posits that the complexity of spectral information in remote sensing imagery can serve as a proxy for regional biodiversity. However, the relationship between spectral diversity (SD) and biodiversity differs for different environmental conditions. Previous SVH studies often overlooked these differences. We utilized species data from field surveys in Inner Mongolia and drone-derived multispectral imagery to establish a quantitative relationship between SD and biodiversity. A geographically weighted regression (GWR) model was used to describe the SD–biodiversity relationship and map the biodiversity indices in different experimental areas in Inner Mongolia, China. Spatial autocorrelation analysis revealed that both SD and biodiversity indices exhibited strong and statistically significant spatial autocorrelation in their distribution patterns. Among all spectral diversity indices, the convex hull area exhibited the best model fit with the Margalef richness index (Margalef), the coefficient of variation showed the strongest predictive performance for species richness (Richness), and the convex hull volume provided the highest explanatory power for Shannon diversity (Shannon). Predictions for Shannon achieved the lowest relative root mean square error (RRMSE = 0.17), indicating the highest predictive accuracy, whereas Richness exhibited systematic underestimation with a higher RRMSE (0.23). Compared to the commonly used linear regression model in SVH studies, the GWR model exhibited a 4.7- to 26.5-fold improvement in goodness-of-fit. Despite the relatively low R² value (≤0.59), the model yields biodiversity predictions that are broadly aligned with field observations. Our approach explicitly considers the spatial heterogeneity of the SD–biodiversity relationship. The GWR model had significantly higher fitting accuracy than the linear regression model, indicating its potential for remote sensing-based biodiversity assessments.

The drawback of pixel-based change detection is that it neglects the spatial correlation with neighboring pixels and has a high commission ratio. In contrast, object-based change detection (OBCD) depends on the accuracy of the segmentation scale, which is of great significance in image analysis. Accordingly, an object-based approach for automatic change detection using multiple classifiers and multi-scale uncertainty analysis (OB-MMUA) in high-resolution (HR) remote sensing images is proposed in this paper. In this algorithm, the gray-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM), morphological, and Gabor filter texture features are extracted to construct the input data, along with the spectral features, to utilize the respective advantages of the features and to compensate for the insufficient spectral information. In addition, random forest is used to select the features and determine the optimal feature vectors for the change detection. Change vector analysis (CVA) based on uncertainty analysis is then implemented to select the initial training samples. According to the diversity, support vector machine (SVM), k-nearest neighbor (KNN), and extra-trees (ExT) classifiers are then chosen as the base classifiers for Dempster-Shafer (D-S) evidence theory fusion, and unlabeled samples are selected using an active learning method with spatial information. Finally, multi-scale object-based D-S evidence theory fusion and uncertainty analysis is used to classify the difference image. To validate the proposed approach, we conducted experiments using multispectral images collected by the ZY-3 and GF-2 satellites. The experimental results confirmed the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed approach, which integrates the respective advantages of the pixel-based and object-based methods.