# Learning Woody Clearing With Loss Alignment for Zero-Shot Regrowth and Woody Segmentation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.26489 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.26489/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 15 of its 65 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Aug 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [Grounding DINO: Marrying DINO with Grounded Pre-Training for Open-Set Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05499/) (2023)
- [V-Net: Fully Convolutional Neural Networks for Volumetric Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.04797/) (2016)
- [Remote Sensing Image Change Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00208/) (2021)
- [Mitigating Neural Network Overconfidence with Logit Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.09310/) (2022)
- [The Segment Anything Model (SAM) for Remote Sensing Applications: From Zero to One Shot](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.16623/) (2023)
- [Changer: Feature Interaction is What You Need for Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.08290/) (2022)
- [Learning Spectral-Spatial-Temporal Features via a Recurrent Convolutional Neural Network for Change Detection in Multispectral Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.02642/) (2018)
- [CDMamba: Incorporating Local Clues into Mamba for Remote Sensing Image Binary Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.04207/) (2024)
- [Segment Any Change](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01188/) (2024)
- [A Mamba-based Siamese Network for Remote Sensing Change Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.06839/) (2024)
- [ObjFormer: Learning Land-Cover Changes From Paired OSM Data and Optical High-Resolution Imagery via Object-Guided Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02674/) (2023)
- [Overcoming Overconfidence for Active Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.10571/) (2023)
- [Classifying Bicycle Infrastructure Using On-Bike Street-Level Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.19194/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Detecting woody clearing is vital for managing biodiversity. Deep learning models can detect change in woody vegetation from bitemporal remote sensing imagery, however generated products may not meet end-user specifications due to unaligned loss definitions. Further limitations of deep learning models are the reliance on large datasets which can be difficult to attain for spatially rare and ambiguous events such as regrowth detection. In this work we train a model to detect woody change using bitemporal Sentinel-2 imagery consisting of 7 years' worth of annual imagery across the state of New South Wales, Australia. To align the objective of the model with end-user metrics, we introduce the loss scaling coefficient α which transforms the objective to optimize for specific Fβ scores. Introducing α was found to increase precision by 1.85x or recall by 1.12x. We propose input imagery augmentation and generation techniques that allow the woody change detection model to zero-shot transfer to regrowth and woody segmentation tasks. For woody segmentation, image generation techniques using activation maximization with low α values for stability and image generation techniques derived from handcrafted features utilizing a mosaic of clearing patches and artificial trees for contextual grounding were found to outperform prior woody segmentation works of the study area, reducing the overall error by up to 18.2%. For zero-shot woody regrowth, creating pseudo-post and prior images resulted in the model achieving an F1 score of 0.845, creating a foundation for future regrowth detection work.