Top-down Green-ups: Satellite Sensing and Deep Models to Predict Buffelgrass Phenology (Papers Track)
Lucas Rosenblatt (NYU); Bin Han (University of Washington); Erin Posthumus (USA NPN); Theresa Crimmins (USA NPN); Bill G Howe (University of Washington)
Abstract
An invasive species of grass known as "buffelgrass" contributes to severe wildfires and biodiversity loss in the Southwest United States. We tackle the problem of predicting buffelgrass "green-ups" (i.e. readiness for herbicidal treatment). To make our predictions, we explore temporal, visual and multi-modal models that combine satellite sensing and deep learning. We find that all of our neural-based approaches improve over conventional buffelgrass green-up models, and discuss how neural model deployment promises significant resource savings.