ResAF-Net: An Anchor-Free Attention-Based Network for Tree Detection and Agricultural Mapping in Palestine

TL;DR

ResAF-Net is a satellite-based, attention-enhanced neural network designed for large-scale tree detection in Palestinian agriculture, demonstrating high accuracy and practical GIS integration for resource-limited settings.

Contribution

The paper introduces ResAF-Net, a novel anchor-free, attention-based architecture tailored for dense tree detection in challenging, resource-constrained environments like Palestine.

Findings

Achieved 82% recall and 63.03% mAP@0.50 on benchmark data.

Successfully integrated the model into a GIS platform for practical use.

Demonstrated the model's effectiveness in real-world agricultural monitoring.

Abstract

Reliable agricultural data is essential for food security, land-use planning, and economic resilience, yet in Palestine, such data remains difficult to collect at scale because of fragmented landscapes, limited field access, and restrictions on aerial monitoring. This paper presents ResAF-Net, a satellite-based tree detection framework designed for large-scale agricultural monitoring in resource-constrained settings. The proposed architecture combines a ResNet-50 encoder, Atrous Spatial Pyramid Pooling (ASPP), a feature-fusion stage, a multi-head self-attention refinement module, and an anchor-free FCOS detection head to improve tree localization in dense and heterogeneous scenes. Trained on the MillionTrees benchmark, the model achieved 82% Recall, 63.03% mAP@0.50, and 35.47% mAP@0.50:0.95 on the validation split, indicating strong sensitivity to tree presence while maintaining competitive localization quality. Beyond benchmark evaluation, we implemented the model within a web-based GIS application integrated with Palestinian cadastral data from GeoMolg, enabling tree analysis at scene, parcel, and community levels. This deployment demonstrates the practical feasibility of AI-assisted agricultural inventorying in Palestine. It provides a foundation for data-driven monitoring, reporting, and future species-level analysis of Mediterranean tree crops.