Pixel-based vegetation mapping at class-level from UAV multispectral imagery: application in an alpine lake ecosystem

Mohammad Elahi, Alessandra Spadaro, Francesca Matrone, Andrea Maria Lingua, Chiara Graziani, Vittorio Fra

Abstract. Vegetation mapping in alpine environments is essential for monitoring ecosystem dynamics and climate change impacts, yet remains challenging when using very high-resolution UAV imagery under limited labeled data. This study proposes a data-centric, pixel- based classification framework for class-level vegetation mapping using multispectral UAV data acquired in an alpine study area. The approach prioritizes improving data representation rather than increasing model complexity. To address label scarcity, a feature-rich dataset was constructed by integrating spectral information, vegetation indices, and lightweight spatial descriptors to enhance class separability. Classification was performed using XGBoost, which is well suited for multispectral tabular data and robust under imbalanced conditions. The results show consistent classification performance across vegetation types and demonstrate the effectiveness of dataset enrichment under limited supervision, highlighting the importance of feature representation in data-scarce scenarios.