A Novel Attention-Based Early Fusion Multi-Modal CNN Approach to Identify Soil Erosion Based on Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Soil erosion poses significant ecological and economic challenges, necessitating precise and effective identification methods. Traditional models frequently overlook the intricate relationships between erosion factors and multispectral remote sensing data. To enhance these traditional methods, a novel dual-input gated fusion Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) has been developed, integrating channel and spatial attention mechanisms. This innovative model strengthens the connection between multispectral images and erosion factors, improving the accuracy and generalizability of erosion predictions. The model utilizes data collected from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with high-precision multispectral sensors. By processing both spectral images and erosion factor data, the model effectively captures complex soil spatial distributions. The dual-input gated fusion mechanism allows the network to extract high-level semantics while suppressing redundant information, ensuring robust performance even in heterogeneous terrains. Experimental results indicate that this framework significantly enhances the performance of traditional models, providing superior predictions for small and medium-sized areas. Experimental results indicate that the presented framework can achieve better accuracy (96.92%) compared with other machine learning approaches, such as Random Forest (89.64%), VGGNET (91.52%), and RESNET (90.18%). Moreover, the proposed method can improve accuracy by 26.59% compared to the traditional RUSLE model. This improvement is critical for applications in ecological restoration and sustainable development. The integration of deep learning techniques with UAV-based data collection offers a powerful tool for environmental monitoring and management.