Analysis of the importance of five new spectral indices from WorldView-2 in tree species classification

Spectral information mining plays a significant role in tree species classification using remote sensing images but a measure of the importance of the mined features is also necessary. We created five new spectral indices and used MLC-RFI to determine their importance. The results showed that these spectral indices had a positive effect on tree species classification, and their importance was ranked as follows: PAI578 > PAI678 > TAI578 > TAI678 > SI57. The experimental results showed that important spectral indices for tree species classification can be created and that it is beneficial to mine spectral information from remote sensing images.