Textural Discrimination of an Invasive Plant, Schinus terebinthifolius, from Low Altitude Aerial Digital Imagery

Schinus terebinthifolius, known as Brazilian pepper, is an exotic, invasive plant species in Florida that displaces native plant species and disrupts wildlife habitat. Aerial surveys typically used to monitor ecosystem change may be augmented with texture analyses to improve the speed and consistency with which S. terebinthifolius is detected in the images. Image processing using high-resolution imagery can take advantage of high spectral variability in adjacent pixels of the same cover type by measuring spatial patterns of texture in neighborhoods of pixels. Texture features derived from first and second-order statistics and edge components in high-resolution digital color infrared images were tested for their ability to discriminate S. terebinthifolius. Multiple linear logistic regressions found a best subset combination of texture features that consistently identified core areas of S. terebinthifolius. Misclassification of other cover types as S. terebinthifolius was low except where Sabal palmetto was present in the images.