UAV Imagery and Point Cloud Data for Vegetation Recovery in South African Mistbelt Forests

Spring 2024 data from three Mistbelt forests in the Amathole region, South Africa. The dataset comprises high-resolution RGB orthomosaics, 3D point clouds, derived vegetation indices, and ground-based leaf spectral data from 270 Podocarpus latifolius samples, collected to evaluate active forest restoration. It was created by researchers from the University of Fort Hare and submitted to GIScience & Remote Sensing.

Use Cases

• Comparing vegetation health between reference and restoration sites based on derived RGB indices like VEG, TGI, and NGRDI.
• Modeling forest structural complexity using point cloud metrics such as canopy height, cover, and above-ground biomass.
• Training and validating binary vegetation classification models using the provided Random Trees and SVM outputs with accuracy metrics.
• Analyzing spatial variation in restoration outcomes using the provided RStudio scripts for ANOVA, PCA, and stepwise regression.

Strengths

• Includes multiple complementary data types: RGB orthomosaics, 3D point clouds, derived indices, structural metrics, and ground truth leaf spectral data.
• Classification outputs have reported high accuracy, with user's accuracy between 95–99% and Kappa values from 0.76 to 0.96.
• Data collection follows a structured 2 × 3 factorial design across paired reference and restoration sites in three forest blocks.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for specific modeling tasks.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Temporal coverage is limited to a single-season survey in spring 2024, capturing no seasonal or multi-year dynamics.

Provenance

Source

University of Fort Hare, Department of Agronomy.

Collection Method

Data acquired using a DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise Dual drone and processed with ArcGIS Pro and RStudio.

Time Range

Spring 2024

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-02 10:46:37; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Amathole Mistbelt forests (Izingcuka, Swallowtail, and Madonna and Child), Eastern Cape, South Africa.