Use of Guided Regularized Random Forest for Biophysical Parameter Retrieval

This paper introduces a feature selection method based on random forest -the Guided Regularized Random Forest (GRRF)- which can be used in classification and regression tasks. The method is based on the regularization of the information gain in the random forest nodes to obtain a subset of relevant and non-redundant features. The proposed method is used as a preliminary step In the process of retrieving biophysical parameters from a hyperspectral image. Preliminary experiments show that we can reduce the RMSE of the retrievals by around 7% for the Leaf Area Index and around 8% for the fraction of vegetation cover when compared to the results using random forest features.