Model Generalization in Deep Learning Applications for Land Cover Mapping

Abstract: Recent work has shown that deep learning models can be used to classify land-use data from geospatial satellite imagery. We show that when these deep learning models are trained on data from specific continents/seasons, there is a high degree of variability in model performance on out-of-sample continents/seasons. This suggests that just because a model accurately predicts land-use classes in one continent or season does not mean that the model will accurately predict land-use classes in a different continent or season. We then use clustering techniques on satellite imagery from different continents to visualize the differences in landscapes that make geospatial generalization particularly difficult, and summarize our takeaways for future satellite imagery-related applications.