Fine-Scale Grassland Classification Using UAV-Based Multi-Sensor Image Fusion and Deep Learning

Grassland classification via remote sensing is essential for ecosystem monitoring and precision management, yet conventional satellite-based approaches are fundamentally constrained by coarse spatial resolution. To overcome this limitation, we harness high-resolution UAV multi-sensor data, integrating multi-scale image fusion with deep learning to achieve fine-scale grassland classification that satellites cannot provide. First, four categories of UAV data, including RGB, multispectral, thermal infrared, and LiDAR point cloud, were collected, and a fused image tensor consisting of 10 channels (NDVI, VCI, CHM, etc.) was constructed through orthorectification and resampling. For feature-level fusion, four deep fusion networks were designed. Among them, the MultiScale Pyramid Fusion Network, utilizing a pyramid pooling module, effectively integrated spectral and structural features, achieving optimal performance in all six image fusion evaluation metrics, including information entropy (6.84), spatial frequency (15.56), and mean gradient (12.54). Subsequently, training and validation datasets were constructed by integrating visual interpretation samples. Four backbone networks, including UNet++, DeepLabV3+, PSPNet, and FPN, were employed, and attention modules (SE, ECA, and CBAM) were introduced separately to form 12 model combinations. Results indicated that the UNet++ network combined with the SE attention module achieved the best segmentation performance on the validation set, with a mean Intersection over Union (mIoU) of 77.68%, overall accuracy (OA) of 86.98%, F1-score of 81.48%, and Kappa coefficient of 0.82. In the categories of Leymus chinensis and Puccinellia distans, producer’s accuracy (PA)/user’s accuracy (UA) reached 86.46%/82.30% and 82.40%/77.68%, respectively. Whole-image prediction validated the model’s coherent identification capability for patch boundaries. In conclusion, this study provides a systematic approach for integrating multi-source UAV remote sensing data and intelligent grassland interpretation, offering technical support for grassland ecological monitoring and resource assessment.