Mapping plucking areas of tea plantations is essential for tea plantation management and production estimation. However, on-ground survey methods are time-consuming and labor-intensive, and satellite-based remotely sensed data are not fine enough for plucking area mapping that is 0.5-1.5 m in width. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) remote sensing can provide an alternative. This paper explores the potential of using UAV-derived remotely sensed data for identifying plucking areas of tea plantations. In particular, four classification models were built based on different UAV data (optical imagery, digital aerial photogrammetry, and lidar data). The results indicated that the integration of optical imagery and lidar data produced the highest overall accuracy using the random forest algorithm (94.39%), while the digital aerial photogrammetry data could be an alternative to lidar point clouds with only a similar to 3% accuracy loss. The plucking area of tea plantations in the Huashan Tea Garden was accurately measured for the first time with a total area of 6.41 ha, which accounts for 57.47% of the tea garden land. The most important features required for tea plantation mapping were the canopy height, variances of heights, blue band, and red band. Furthermore, a cost-benefit analysis was conducted. The novelty of this study is that it is the first specific exploration of UAV remote sensing in mapping plucking areas of tea plantations, demonstrating it to be an accurate and cost-effective method, and hence represents an advance in remote sensing of tea plantations.
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