Tree Species Classification Using Ground-Based LiDAR Data by Various Point Cloud Deep Learning Methods

Tree species information is an important factor in forest resource surveys, and light detection and ranging (LiDAR), as a new technical tool for forest resource surveys, can quickly obtain the 3D structural information of trees. In particular, the rapid and accurate classification and identification of tree species information from individual tree point clouds using deep learning methods is a new development direction for LiDAR technology in forest applications. In this study, mobile laser scanning (MLS) data collected in the field are first pre-processed to extract individual tree point clouds. Two downsampling methods, non-uniform grid and farthest point sampling, are combined to process the point cloud data, and the obtained sample data are more conducive to the deep learning model for extracting classification features. Finally, four different types of point cloud deep learning models, including pointwise multi-layer perceptron (MLP) (PointNet, PointNet++, PointMLP), convolution-based (PointConv), graph-based (DGCNN), and attention-based (PCT) models, are used to classify and identify the individual tree point clouds of eight tree species. The results show that the classification accuracy of all models (except for PointNet) exceeded 0.90, where the PointConv model achieved the highest classification accuracy for tree species classification. The streamlined PointMLP model can still achieve high classification accuracy, while the PCT model did not achieve good accuracy in the tree species classification experiment, likely due to the small sample size. We compare the training process and final classification accuracy of the different types of point cloud deep learning models in tree species classification experiments, further demonstrating the advantages of deep learning techniques in tree species recognition and providing experimental reference for related research and technological development.