Abstract

Vegetation height plays a crucial role in various ecological and environmental applications, such as biodiversity assessment and monitoring, landscape characterization, conservation planning and disaster management. Its estimation is traditionally based on in situ measurements or airborne Light Detection and Ranging sensors. However, such methods are often proven insufficient in covering large area landscapes due to high demands in cost, labor and time. Since, the emergence of wearable technology, ubiquitous sensors and Internet of Things offers an appealing framework for monitoring environmental parameters at extremely low cost, which, in turn, contributes to the development of affordable real-time vegetation monitoring system. This is especially relevant to rural environments and underdeveloped countries. We proposed a methodology for data acquisition from a ubiquitous sensor wearable platform and developed a machine-learning model to learn vegetation height on the basis attribute associated with pressure sensor. The proposed methods are proven particularly effective in a region where the land has forestry structure. The results of linear regression model (r2 = 0.81 and RSME = 16.73 cm) and multi-regression model (r2= 0.83 and RSME = 15.73 cm), indicate a promising alternative in vegetation height estimation when in situ or Light Detection and Ranging data or wireless sensor network are not available or affordable, thus facilitating and reducing the cost of ecological monitoring and environmental sustainability planning tasks.