Geosciences 2018, 8(1), 28; https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences8010028
An Automatic Procedure for the Quantitative Characterization of Submarine Bedforms
Massimo Di Stefano 1,2,*
and Larry Alan Mayer 1,2
and Larry Alan Mayer 1,21
Department of Earth Science, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824, USA
2
Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Joint Hydrographic Center, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 22 November 2017 / Revised: 9 January 2018 / Accepted: 10 January 2018 / Published: 21 January 2018
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Geomorphometry)
Abstract
A model for the extraction and quantitative characterization of submarine landforms from high-resolution digital bathymetry is presented. The procedure is fully automated and comprises two parts. The first part consists of an analytical model which extracts quantitative information from a Digital Elevation Model in the form of objects with similar parametric characteristics (terrain objects). The second part is a rule-based model where the terrain objects are reclassified into distinct landforms with well-defined three dimensional characteristics. For the focus of this work, the quantitative characterization of isolated dunes (height greater than 2 m) is used to exemplify the process. The primary metrics used to extract terrain objects are the flatness threshold and the search radius, which are then used by the analytical model to identify the feature type. Once identified as dunes, a sequence of spatial analysis routines is applied to identify and compute metrics for each dune including length, height, width, ray of curvature, slope analysis for each stoss and lee side, and dune symmetry. Dividing the model into two parts, one scale-dependent and another centered around the shape of the landform, makes the model applicable to other submarine landforms like ripples, mega-ripples, and coral reefs, which also have well-defined three-dimensional characteristics. View Full-TextKeywords:
geomorphometry; GIS; spatial scale; spatial analysis; terrain analysis
▼
Figures
Figure 1
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).
Supplementary material
-
Externally hosted supplementary file 1
Doi: 10.5281/zenodo.1149564
Link: https://github.com/epifanio/geosciences-250279/tree/v0.0.1
Description: Code repository to reproduce the paper's results. It is an alpha release which will constantly updated and maintained. The DOI will always point to the latest version release.
Share & Cite This Article
MDPI and ACS Style
Di Stefano, M.; Mayer, L.A. An Automatic Procedure for the Quantitative Characterization of Submarine Bedforms. Geosciences 2018, 8, 28.
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
Related Articles
Article Metrics
Comments
[Return to top]
Geosciences
EISSN 2076-3263
Published by MDPI AG, Basel, Switzerland
RSS
E-Mail Table of Contents Alert