Evaluating Google Street View for tracking invasive alien plants along roads

Abstract

Invasive alien plants are considered a major driver of global biodiversity loss. Therefore, there is a huge demand of spatial and temporal data on their distribution for investigating possible drivers of species invasions and for predictions of future distributions. We use Google Street View imagery (GSV) as a new source of spatial and temporal data. GSV provides millions of panoramic views along road networks worldwide allowing for the identification of many plant species, including invasive ones. Thus, GSV has a great potential to support ecological research in documenting species distribution, but reliable validation of its precision and accuracy is lacking. Here, we describe and evaluate an approach using GSV to visually track the spread of invasive alien plants, the North American goldenrods (Solidago canadensis and S. gigantea) occurring abundantly along road network in Poland (Central Europe). We determined presence/absence of the species along 160 randomly selected transects of a length of 500 m by visual inspection of GSV images and compared it with field surveys at the same transects. We show that the occurrence of goldenrods in GSV is a reliable predictor of their occurrence in the wild. Sampling parameters, like road width, season when GSV pictures were taken and number of months elapsed since taking the GSV pictures, did not change the correlation between outputs of the two methods (GSV and field sampling). Furthermore, both the occurrence of goldenrods observed in the field and their occurrence in GSV have similar relations to habitat characteristics investigated (the same direction of relationship and similar effect size). We suggest Google Street View images may be an additional tool to be used in the detection and tracking of the spread of invasive alien plants along roadsides. The approach may be useful in assessing temporal changes in roadside vegetation and managing problematic plant species across large spatial scales and may contribute to the further development of more efficient sampling methods in ecological studies.

Scale dependence of landscape heterogeneity effects on plant invasions

“…Finally, using Google Street View (GSV) imagery available F I G U R E 1 Distribution of 1,347 transects sampled for goldenrods in agricultural landscapes of Poland and the goldenrod abundance index recorded in the studied locations in Google Maps web mapping service, we excluded 13 communes with no GSV coverage. This resulted in 1,347 communes, in which we randomly selected a transect of about 500 m length following the approach described in Kotowska et al (2021). Using GIS tools and Open Street Map vector data, we placed in each commune a random point located along road network and subsequently used it as a beginning of a transect.…”

Spatial point pattern analysis of urban retail stores: the case of twelve large- and medium-sized Greek cities

“…However, the GSV images' temporal dimension is limited as it is intermittently updated (Vandeviver, 2014). Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the GSV images have been exploited for various scientific fields beyond the topic of retail, such as for the detection and monitoring of the spread of invasive alien plants (Kotowska, et al 2021), or for the production of 3D city models along with very high resolution satellite images (Kraff, et al 2020), as well as from studies that utilized machine (Yang, et al 2020;Dakin, et al 2020) and deep learning methods (Ki and Lee, 2021;Nagata, et al 2020), thus reflecting the utility of this data source.…”

The use of photos to investigate ecological change

“…traffic, CCTV and surveillance cameras), webcams from ski resorts or beaches, etc. Advantages of using public archives as data sources are that it appears to be more time‐ and cost‐effective and has a lower carbon footprint than collecting data in a traditional manner (Kotowska et al, 2021). These advantages are amplified for global‐scale studies, where traditional field sampling is very laborious.…”

“…CCTV cameras). Some recent studies assess the usefulness of Google Street View to study the invasion of alien plant species in road verges (Collette & Pither, 2015; Deus et al, 2016; Kotowska et al, 2021), to record the number of urban street trees and estimate their diameter (Berland et al, 2019), to evaluate urban green ecosystem services such as cooling, air purification and noise attenuation (Barbierato et al, 2020), and to inventory the potential habitat for native pollinators in residential front yards (Burr et al, 2018). Some public archives also document more rural landscapes.…”

“…Rousselet et al, 2013) and plants (e.g. Dyrmann et al, 2021; Kotowska et al, 2021). Photos are a type of legacy remote sensing data that allow scientists to test for global environmental change effects (sensu Vellend et al, 2013), just as herbarium specimens, resurveyed vegetation plots and land survey records (De Frenne, 2015; reviewed by Vellend et al, 2013; Willis et al, 2017).…”