A Linear Attention Framework with Dual-Axis Multi-Scale Fusion for Fine-Grained Eucalyptus Change Detection
The fine-scale monitoring of plantation cover disappearance and appearance is challenging because these changes are often expressed as weak within-class variations in high-resolution images. This study proposes MLLAForestCD, a three-class pixel-level semantic change-detection network for Eucalyptus plantations. The model uses an MLLA encoder to model the long-range spatial context with efficient linear attention, while a dual-axis change extractor reorganizes paired bi-temporal features through complementary layouts before contextual interaction. Multi-scale fusion then combines semantic cues with boundary-level details. We further construct the Eucalyptus Change Detection Dataset (ECDD), which contains plantation scenes with weak spectral contrast, fragmented boundaries, and directional canopy textures. Under the retained patch-level training/validation split, MLLAForestCD achieves an F1-score of 96.66% and an mIoU of 93.59%. After separate training and evaluation based on WHU-CD, it achieves an F1-score of 97.29% and an IoU of 90.10%; this result reflects performance under an independent WHU-CD training protocol. Finally, annual change maps from 2020 to 2023 are used to derive the most recently detected plantation-appearance time within the observation window. The resulting product is interpreted as a recent stand-renewal event map and requires independent forestry records before biological stand age can be inferred.
Authors
- Xu Tang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0696-7613)
- Haotian You (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9881-949X)
- Jirong Ding
- Jianjun Chen
- Guangjin Li
- Haoyu Wang
- Liyang You
Institutions
- Guilin University of Technology (CN)
- Jiangxi Province Forestry Survey Planning Institute (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Remote Sensing
- Published
- 2026-09-01
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3390/rs18172944
- Primary Topic
- Remote-Sensing Image Classification
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Natural Science Foundation of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Guilin University of Technology