Influence of Structure from Motion Algorithm Parameters on Metrics for Individual Tree Detection Accuracy and Precision

Uncrewed aerial system (UAS) structure from motion (SfM) monitoring strategies for individual trees has rapidly expanded in the early 21st century. It has become common for studies to report accuracies for individual tree heights and DBH, along with stand density metrics. This study evaluates individual tree detection and stand basal area accuracy and precision in five ponderosa pine sites against the range of SfM parameters in the Agisoft Metashape, Pix4DMapper, and OpenDroneMap algorithms. The study is designed to frame UAS-SfM individual tree monitoring accuracy in the context of data processing and storage demands as a function of SfM algorithm parameter levels. Results show that when SfM algorithms are properly tuned, differences between software types are negligible, with Metashape providing a median F-score improvement over OpenDroneMap of 0.02 and PIX4DMapper of 0.06. However, tree extraction performance varied greatly across algorithm parameters, with the greatest extraction rates typically coming from parameters causing increased density in dense point clouds and minimal point cloud filtering. Transferring UAS-SfM forest monitoring into management will require tradeoffs between accuracy and efficiency. Our analysis shows that a one-step reduction in dense point cloud quality saves 77–86% in point cloud processing time without decreasing tree extraction (F-score) or basal area precision using Metashape and PIX4DMapper but the same parameter change for OpenDroneMap caused a ~5% loss in precision. Providing reproducible processing strategies is a vital step in successfully transferring these technologies into usage as management tools.