SERA-H: Beyond Native Sentinel Spatial Limits for High-Resolution Canopy Height Mapping

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Boudras, Thomas, Schwartz, Martin, Fensholt, Rasmus, Brandt, Martin, Fayad, Ibrahim, Wigneron, Jean-Pierre, Belouze, Gabriel, Fogel, Fajwel, Ciais, Philippe
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Boudras, Thomas
Schwartz, Martin
Fensholt, Rasmus
Brandt, Martin
Fayad, Ibrahim
Wigneron, Jean-Pierre
Belouze, Gabriel
Fogel, Fajwel
Ciais, Philippe
author_facet Boudras, Thomas
Schwartz, Martin
Fensholt, Rasmus
Brandt, Martin
Fayad, Ibrahim
Wigneron, Jean-Pierre
Belouze, Gabriel
Fogel, Fajwel
Ciais, Philippe
contents High-resolution mapping of canopy height is essential for forest management and biodiversity monitoring. Although recent studies have led to the advent of deep learning methods using satellite imagery to predict height maps, these approaches often face a trade-off between data accessibility and spatial resolution. To overcome these limitations, we present SERA-H, an end-to-end model combining a super-resolution module (EDSR) and temporal attention encoding (UTAE). Trained under the supervision of high-density LiDAR-derived Canopy Height Models (CHM), our model generates 2.5 m resolution height maps from freely available Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 (10 m) time series data. Evaluated on an open-source benchmark dataset in France, SERA-H, with a MAE of 2.6 m and R2 of 0.82, not only outperforms standard Sentinel- 1/2 baselines but also achieves performance comparable to or better than methods relying on commercial very high-resolution imagery (SPOT-6/7, PlanetScope, Maxar). These results demonstrate that combining high-resolution supervision with the spatiotemporal information embedded in time series enables the reconstruction of details beyond the input sensors' native resolution. SERA-H opens the possibility of freely mapping forests with high revisit frequency, achieving accuracy comparable to that of costly commercial imagery.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_18128
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SERA-H: Beyond Native Sentinel Spatial Limits for High-Resolution Canopy Height Mapping
Boudras, Thomas
Schwartz, Martin
Fensholt, Rasmus
Brandt, Martin
Fayad, Ibrahim
Wigneron, Jean-Pierre
Belouze, Gabriel
Fogel, Fajwel
Ciais, Philippe
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
I.2.10; I.4.3; I.4.8; I.2.6
High-resolution mapping of canopy height is essential for forest management and biodiversity monitoring. Although recent studies have led to the advent of deep learning methods using satellite imagery to predict height maps, these approaches often face a trade-off between data accessibility and spatial resolution. To overcome these limitations, we present SERA-H, an end-to-end model combining a super-resolution module (EDSR) and temporal attention encoding (UTAE). Trained under the supervision of high-density LiDAR-derived Canopy Height Models (CHM), our model generates 2.5 m resolution height maps from freely available Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 (10 m) time series data. Evaluated on an open-source benchmark dataset in France, SERA-H, with a MAE of 2.6 m and R2 of 0.82, not only outperforms standard Sentinel- 1/2 baselines but also achieves performance comparable to or better than methods relying on commercial very high-resolution imagery (SPOT-6/7, PlanetScope, Maxar). These results demonstrate that combining high-resolution supervision with the spatiotemporal information embedded in time series enables the reconstruction of details beyond the input sensors' native resolution. SERA-H opens the possibility of freely mapping forests with high revisit frequency, achieving accuracy comparable to that of costly commercial imagery.
title SERA-H: Beyond Native Sentinel Spatial Limits for High-Resolution Canopy Height Mapping
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
I.2.10; I.4.3; I.4.8; I.2.6
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.18128