DLAN: A dual attention network for effective land cover classification in remote sensing

In the era of remote sensing (RS), the demand for accurate land cover classification (LCC) has intensified due to various environmental challenges such as deforestation and urbanization. Conventional approaches often rely on shallow features for classification, limiting their effectiveness in capturing spatial patterns and diverse land cover types. In response, this study introduces a novel LCC approach utilizing a convolutional neural network (CNN) equipped with a dual land cover attention segment. The proposed module integrates channel attention (CA) and spatial attention mechanisms (SA) to enhance the discriminative capabilities of deep models. Leveraging inter-channel and inter-spatial relationships, the dual attention module enables the identification of various land cover types, spatial patterns, and color variations. Through thorough experimentation, the InceptionV3 feature extractor was identified as the optimal backbone for the proposed network architecture. Furthermore, to address the challenge of diverse land cover types, highly curated datasets are utilized. Additionally, to optimize model efficiency and reduce size, an improved model compression approach is employed. The effectiveness of the proposed Dual Land Cover Attention Network (DLAN) was evaluated through extensive experimentation, demonstrating superior performance compared to conventional methods. The results indicate the potential of DLAN in advancing LCC tasks, facilitating detailed agricultural zoning, environmental monitoring, and urban planning at a regional scale.