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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ISPRS-Archives</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ISPRS-Archives</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">2194-9034</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/isprs-archives-XLIX-B3-2026-57-2026</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Land Cover Classification of Multi-Source Airborne Data using Conventional and Deep-Learning-Based Unsupervised Domain Adaptation</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Deisling</surname>
<given-names>Edwin</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zipperer</surname>
<given-names>Raphael</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Kottler</surname>
<given-names>Benedikt</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Qiu</surname>
<given-names>Kevin</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1512-4260</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Böge</surname>
<given-names>Melanie</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Bulatov</surname>
<given-names>Dimitri</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Fraunhofer IOSB, 76725 Ettlingen, Germany</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>30</day>
<month>07</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>XLIX-B3-2026</volume>
<fpage>57</fpage>
<lpage>64</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Edwin Deisling et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLIX-B3-2026/57/2026/isprs-archives-XLIX-B3-2026-57-2026.html">This article is available from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLIX-B3-2026/57/2026/isprs-archives-XLIX-B3-2026-57-2026.html</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLIX-B3-2026/57/2026/isprs-archives-XLIX-B3-2026-57-2026.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLIX-B3-2026/57/2026/isprs-archives-XLIX-B3-2026-57-2026.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>For an increasing number of applications, land cover maps can be generated from remote sensing imagery using conventional and deep-learning-based semantic segmentation models. Relying on a large pool of training data, the networks struggle with the spatial-temporal-spectral heterogeneity in the complex and diverse remote sensing imageries, leading to a significant number of errors in the model predictions. This paper presents a workflow comprising domain adaptation and classification. In particular, we analyze two domain adaptation techniques: First, a conventional histogram-matching method, which has turned out to be a surprisingly fast and reliable tool in a previous study, and second, a CycleGAN, which we applied both in its standard form and with the perceptual loss, thereby penalizing style inconsistencies on deeper layers. By applying the workflow to three remote sensing datasets and six directions of domain adaptation, we show that there is &amp;ldquo;no free lunch&amp;rdquo; in the sense that all domain adaptation methods have their advantages. Depending on the dataset, classification method, and especially on the availability of 3D data, the performance gap can be reduced to up to 1.5% of the mean F1 score, demonstrating the soundness of the proposed method.</p>
</abstract>
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