Diagnosing emerging infectious diseases of trees using ground penetrating radar

Giannakis, Iraklis, Tosti, Fabio, Lantini, Livia and Alani, Amir M. (2020) Diagnosing emerging infectious diseases of trees using ground penetrating radar. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 58(2), pp. 1146-1155. ISSN (print) 0196-2892

Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1109/tgrs.2019.2944070

Abstract

Ash dieback, acute oak decline (AOD) and Xylella Fastidiosa are Emerging Infectious Diseases (EIDs) that have spread rapidly in European forests during the last decade. Quarantine measurements have mostly failed to repress the outbreaks and millions of trees have already been infected. Identifying infected trees in a non-destructive manner is of high importance for monitoring, managing and preventing EIDs. The aim of this paper is to examine the capabilities of Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) on evaluating the internal structure of tree-trunks and detecting tree-decay associated with EIDs. Traditionally used processing schemes tuned for GPR line-acquisitions are modified accordingly to be compatible with the new measurement configurations. In particular, a detection framework is presented based on a modified Kirchhoff and a reverse-time migration. Both of the aforementioned methodologies are compatible with measurements taken along closed irregular curves assuming a homogeneous permittivity distribution. To that extent, prior to migration, a novel focal criterion is used that estimates the bulk permittivity of the host medium from the measured B-Scans. The suggested detection scheme is successfully tested on both numerical and laboratory measurements, indicating that GPR has the potential to become a coherent and practical tool for detecting tree-decay associated with EIDs.

Official URL:	https://doi.org/10.1109/tgrs.2019.2944070
Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This work was supported by the following trusts, charities, organizations and individuals : Lord Faringdon Charitable Trust, The Schroder Foundation, Cazenove Charitable Trust, Ernest Cook, Sir Henry Keswick, Ian Bond, P. F. Charitable Trust, Prospect Investment Management Limited, The Adrian Swire Charitable Trust, The John Swire 1989 Charitable Trust, The Sackler Trust, The Tanlaw Foundation and The Wyfold Charitable Trust. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Jonathon West, a friend, a colleague, a forester, a conservationist and an environmentalist who died following an accident in the woodland that he loved.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Ash dieback; acute oak decline; AOD; emerging infectious diseases; EIDs; forestry; ground penetrating radar; GPR; Kirchhoff; migration; reverse-time migration; signal processing; tree; trunk; Xylella Fastidiosa
Research Area:	Research Areas > Civil engineering Research Areas > Electrical and electronic engineering
Faculty, School or Research Centre:	Faculty of Science, Engineering and Computing
Related Records:	UWL Repository record
Date Deposited:	23 Jan 2023 12:11
Last Modified:	23 Jan 2023 12:11
DOI:	https://doi.org/10.1109/tgrs.2019.2944070
URI:	https://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/id/eprint/52271

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