Combining UAV-based hyperspectral and LiDAR data for mangrove species classification using the rotation forest algorithm

•An effective approach for mangrove monitoring with UAV hyperspectral and LiDAR data.•LiDAR-derived CHM helps better recognition of spectrally similar mangrove species.•RoF outperforms RF and LMT for accurate mangrove species classification.•Understory mangroves benefit most from combining spectral and structural information.