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Abstract The biodiversity crisis necessitates spatially extensive methods to monitor multiple taxonomic groups for evidence of change in response to evolving environmental conditions. Programs that combine passive acoustic monitoring and machine learning are increasingly used to meet this need. These methods require large, annotated datasets, which are time‐consuming and expensive to produce, creating potential barriers to adoption in data‐ and funding‐poor regions. Recently released pre‐trained avian acoustic classification models provide opportunities to reduce the need for manual labelling and accelerate the development of new acoustic classification algorithms through transfer learning. Transfer learning is a strategy for developing algorithms under data scarcity that uses pre‐trained models from related tasks to adapt to new tasks.Our primary objective was to develop a transfer learning strategy using the feature embeddings of a pre‐trained avian classification model to train custom acoustic classification models in data‐scarce contexts. We used three annotated avian acoustic datasets to test whether transfer learning and soundscape simulation‐based data augmentation could substantially reduce the annotated training data necessary to develop performant custom acoustic classifiers. We also conducted a sensitivity analysis for hyperparameter choice and model architecture. We then assessed the generalizability of our strategy to increasingly novel non‐avian classification tasks.With as few as two training examples per class, our soundscape simulation data augmentation approach consistently yielded new classifiers with improved performance relative to the pre‐trained classification model and transfer learning classifiers trained with other augmentation approaches. Performance increases were evident for three avian test datasets, including single‐class and multi‐label contexts. We observed that the relative performance among our data augmentation approaches varied for the avian datasets and nearly converged for one dataset when we included more training examples.We demonstrate an efficient approach to developing new acoustic classifiers leveraging open‐source sound repositories and pre‐trained networks to reduce manual labelling. With very few examples, our soundscape simulation approach to data augmentation yielded classifiers with performance equivalent to those trained with many more examples, showing it is possible to reduce manual labelling while still achieving high‐performance classifiers and, in turn, expanding the potential for passive acoustic monitoring to address rising biodiversity monitoring needs.
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This content will become publicly available on December 1, 2025
Class‐specific data augmentation for plant stress classification
Abstract Data augmentation is a powerful tool for improving deep learning‐based image classifiers for plant stress identification and classification. However, selecting an effective set of augmentations from a large pool of candidates remains a key challenge, particularly in imbalanced and confounding datasets. We propose an approach for automated class‐specific data augmentation using a genetic algorithm. We demonstrate the utility of our approach on soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr] stress classification where symptoms are observed on leaves; a particularly challenging problem due to confounding classes in the dataset. Our approach yields substantial performance, achieving a mean‐per‐class accuracy of 97.61% and an overall accuracy of 98% on the soybean leaf stress dataset. Our method significantly improves the accuracy of the most challenging classes, with notable enhancements from 83.01% to 88.89% and from 85.71% to 94.05%, respectively. A key observation we make in this study is that high‐performing augmentation strategies can be identified in a computationally efficient manner. We fine‐tune only the linear layer of the baseline model with different augmentations, thereby reducing the computational burden associated with training classifiers from scratch for each augmentation policy while achieving exceptional performance. This research represents an advancement in automated data augmentation strategies for plant stress classification, particularly in the context of confounding datasets. Our findings contribute to the growing body of research in tailored augmentation techniques and their potential impact on disease management strategies, crop yields, and global food security. The proposed approach holds the potential to enhance the accuracy and efficiency of deep learning‐based tools for managing plant stresses in agriculture.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1954556
- PAR ID:
- 10579886
- Publisher / Repository:
- The Plant Phenome Journal
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The Plant Phenome Journal
- Volume:
- 7
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2578-2703
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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