Lightweight change detection models are essential for industrial applications and edge devices. Reducing the model size while maintaining high accuracy is a key challenge in developing lightweight change detection models. However, many existing methods oversimplify the model architecture, leading to a loss of information and reduced performance. Therefore, developing a lightweight model that can effectively preserve the input information is a challenging problem. To address this challenge, we propose LightCDNet, a novel lightweight change detection model that effectively preserves the input information. LightCDNet consists of an early fusion backbone network and a pyramid decoder for end-to-end change detection. The core component of LightCDNet is the Deep Supervised Fusion Module (DSFM), which guides the early fusion of primary features to improve performance. We evaluated LightCDNet on the LEVIR-CD dataset and found that it achieved comparable or better performance than state-of-the-art models while being 10 to 117 times smaller in size.

Cliff ecosystems are considered the ‘Last Unknown’ because cliffs may host ancient and unique species that are located in extremely hostile environments and are difficult to reach. However, comprehensive and systematic information and databases of cliff flora are unavailable; and obtaining information on these undisturbed ecosystems and cliff flora is fundamental and is of high priority for botanists. We present the first systematically sampled expert‐verified checklist of cliff flora from the ground to the top of cliffs in these harsh environments based on high‐resolution visible imagery captured with close‐range photogrammetry by a smart remote‐controlled unmanned aerial system (UAS). Using approximately 9200 records retrieved from high‐resolution images of 197 cliffs in the Wulingyuan global cultural heritage area, a mid‐subtropical region in China, we identified 267 vascular plant species, 140 genera and 58 families, excluding herbaceous plants. The maximum diversity was attributable to a few dominant families and genera, and most of the genera and families were represented by only a few species. Our findings highlight the unique floristic patterns as well as morphology on these cliffs that warrant further study and the potential for the use of a smart UAS to investigate cliff flora at large and global scales.

Dynamic detection of forest change is the fundamental method of monitoring forest resources and an essential means of preserving the accuracy and timeliness of forest land resource data. This study focuses on a deep learning-based method for dynamic forest change detection using Sentinel-2 satellite data, especially within mountainous areas. First, the performance of various deep learning models (U-Net++, U-Net, LinkNet, DeepLabV3+, and STANet) and various loss functions (CrossEntropyLoss(CELoss), DiceLoss, FocalLoss, and their combinations) are compared on a self-made dataset. Next, the best model and loss function is used to predict the annual forest change in Hunan Province from 2017 to 2021, and the detection results are evaluated in 12 sample areas. Finally, forest changes are detected in Sentinel-2 images for each quarter of 2017–2021. In addition, a dynamic detection map of forest change in Hunan Province from 2017 to 2021 is drawn. The results reveal that the U-Net++ model and the CELoss performed the best on the self-made dataset, with a Precision of 0.795, a Recall of 0.748, and an F1-score of 0.771. The results of annual and quarterly forest change detection were consistent with the changes in the Sentinel-2 images with accurate boundaries. This result demonstrates the high practicality and generalizability of the method used in this paper. This paper achieves a rapid and accurate extraction of multi-temporal Sentinel-2 image forest change areas based on the U-Net++ model, which can be used as a benchmark for future large territorial areas monitoring and management of forest resources.

The co-evolution of multi-cities has emerged as the primary form of urbanization in China in recent years. However, the processes, patterns, and coordination are not well characterized and understood, which hinders the understanding of the driving forces, consequences, and management of polycentric urban development. We used the Continuous Change Detection and Classification (CCDC) algorithm to integrate all available Landsat 5, 7, and 8 images and map annual land use and land cover (LULC) from 2001 to 2017 in the Chang–Zhu–Tan urban agglomeration (CZTUA), a typical urban agglomeration in China. Results showed that the impervious surface in the study area expanded by 371 km² with an annual growth rate of 2.25%, primarily at the cost of cropland (169 km²) and forest (206 km²) during the study period. Urban growth has evolved from infilling being the dominant type in the earlier period to mainly edge-expansion and leapfrogging in the core cities, and from no dominant type to mainly leapfrogging in the satellite cities. The unfolding of the “cool center and hot edge” urban growth pattern in CZTUA, characterized by higher expansion rates in the peripheral than in the core cities, may signify a new form of the co-evolution of multi-cities in the process of urbanization. Detailed urban management and planning policies in CZTUA were analyzed. The co-evolution of multi-cities principles need to be studied in more extensive regions, which could help policymakers to promote sustainable and livable development in the future.

The use of remote sensing images to detect forest changes is of great significance for forest resource management. With the development and implementation of deep learning algorithms in change detection, a large number of models have been designed to detect changes in multi-phase remote sensing images. Although synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data have strong potential for application in forest change detection tasks, most existing deep learning-based models have been designed for optical imagery. Therefore, to effectively combine optical and SAR data in forest change detection, this paper proposes a double Siamese branch-based change detection network called DSNUNet. DSNUNet uses two sets of feature branches to extract features from dual-phase optical and SAR images and employs shared weights to combine features into groups. In the proposed DSNUNet, different feature extraction branch widths were used to compensate for a difference in the amount of information between optical and SAR images. The proposed DSNUNet was validated by experiments on the manually annotated forest change detection dataset. According to the obtained results, the proposed method outperformed other change detection methods, achieving an F1-score of 76.40%. In addition, different combinations of width between feature extraction branches were analyzed in this study. The results revealed an optimal performance of the model at initial channel numbers of the optical imaging branch and SAR image branch of 32 and 8, respectively. The prediction results demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed method in accurately predicting forest changes and suppressing cloud interferences to some extent.