Spatioformer: A Geo-encoded Transformer for Large-Scale Plant Species Richness Prediction

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Guo, Yiqing, Mokany, Karel, Levick, Shaun R., Yang, Jinyan, Moghadam, Peyman
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866913729520599040
author Guo, Yiqing
Mokany, Karel
Levick, Shaun R.
Yang, Jinyan
Moghadam, Peyman
author_facet Guo, Yiqing
Mokany, Karel
Levick, Shaun R.
Yang, Jinyan
Moghadam, Peyman
contents Earth observation data have shown promise in predicting species richness of vascular plants ($α$-diversity), but extending this approach to large spatial scales is challenging because geographically distant regions may exhibit different compositions of plant species ($β$-diversity), resulting in a location-dependent relationship between richness and spectral measurements. In order to handle such geolocation dependency, we propose \textit{Spatioformer}, where a novel geolocation encoder is coupled with the transformer model to encode geolocation context into remote sensing imagery. The Spatioformer model compares favourably to state-of-the-art models in richness predictions on a large-scale ground-truth richness dataset (HAVPlot) that consists of 68,170 in-situ richness samples covering diverse landscapes across Australia. The results demonstrate that geolocational information is advantageous in predicting species richness from satellite observations over large spatial scales. With Spatioformer, plant species richness maps over Australia are compiled from Landsat archive for the years from 2015 to 2023. The richness maps produced in this study reveal the spatiotemporal dynamics of plant species richness in Australia, providing supporting evidence to inform effective planning and policy development for plant diversity conservation. Regions of high richness prediction uncertainties are identified, highlighting the need for future in-situ surveys to be conducted in these areas to enhance the prediction accuracy.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_19256
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Spatioformer: A Geo-encoded Transformer for Large-Scale Plant Species Richness Prediction
Guo, Yiqing
Mokany, Karel
Levick, Shaun R.
Yang, Jinyan
Moghadam, Peyman
Machine Learning
Earth observation data have shown promise in predicting species richness of vascular plants ($α$-diversity), but extending this approach to large spatial scales is challenging because geographically distant regions may exhibit different compositions of plant species ($β$-diversity), resulting in a location-dependent relationship between richness and spectral measurements. In order to handle such geolocation dependency, we propose \textit{Spatioformer}, where a novel geolocation encoder is coupled with the transformer model to encode geolocation context into remote sensing imagery. The Spatioformer model compares favourably to state-of-the-art models in richness predictions on a large-scale ground-truth richness dataset (HAVPlot) that consists of 68,170 in-situ richness samples covering diverse landscapes across Australia. The results demonstrate that geolocational information is advantageous in predicting species richness from satellite observations over large spatial scales. With Spatioformer, plant species richness maps over Australia are compiled from Landsat archive for the years from 2015 to 2023. The richness maps produced in this study reveal the spatiotemporal dynamics of plant species richness in Australia, providing supporting evidence to inform effective planning and policy development for plant diversity conservation. Regions of high richness prediction uncertainties are identified, highlighting the need for future in-situ surveys to be conducted in these areas to enhance the prediction accuracy.
title Spatioformer: A Geo-encoded Transformer for Large-Scale Plant Species Richness Prediction
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.19256