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Can very high‐resolution colour orthophotography and digital surface models (DSMs) from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) be effectively used for assessment of habitat extent and condition in fine‐scale disturbance‐dependent mosaics?

Serra de Arga mountain range, a Natura 2000 protected site in the NW region of Portugal where drastic changes in pastoral activities have occurred over recent decades.

An UAV platform was used to collect very high‐resolution (6 cm) images and to produce a DSM (10 cm). From these data, several features were extracted related to colour, band ratios, as well as texture features calculated from colour imagery and surface elevation. Based on a systematic sampling design, field data were collected for both training and validation of a supervised classifier. Extracted features and ground truth training data were combined to calibrate a pixel‐based …