Change Detection of Desert Sand Dunes: A Remote Sensing Approach

Surender Varma,Biplab Banerjee,Krishna Mohan Buddhiraju,Vatsal Shah

doi:10.4236/ars.2014.31002

Abstract

Deserts are one of the major landforms on the Earth. While deserts occupy about one-fifth of Earth’s land surface, they have been studied to a much lesser extent. All over the world, desert landforms are expanding ever rapidly and more and more human settlements are finding place in desert regions for habitation. Thus, quantifying and monitoring dunes becomes more relevant from a managerial perspective. Analyzing desert areas using satellite imagery is a challenging task due to weak textural differences and nearly homogeneous spectral responses in most parts of the terrain. In this paper, a post-clustering methodology for change detection of desert sand dunes is proposed. Features based on Radon spectrum are used to cluster dunes of various orientations. These clustered boundaries are used to detect if there are any changes occurring in the dune regions. In the experiments, remote sensing data covering various dune regions of the world are observed for possible changes in dune orientations. In all the cases, it is seen that there are no major changes in desert dune orientations since three decades.

Highlights

Desert regions are increasingly facing imminent threats and becoming vulnerable to effects of climate changes, urbanization, land degradation, water shortage, etc. [1]
In this paper we present a novel way of identifying changes in dune orientations
The input image and the reference image belonging to different times but corresponding to the same region are first registered to ensure the correctness of corresponding pixels for the change detection algorithm

Summary

Introduction

Desert regions are increasingly facing imminent threats and becoming vulnerable to effects of climate changes, urbanization, land degradation, water shortage, etc. [1]. Desert regions are increasingly facing imminent threats and becoming vulnerable to effects of climate changes, urbanization, land degradation, water shortage, etc. Low surface runoff which is one of the major characteristics of desert regions helps in preserving these minerals on the land. Quantification of dune morphology helps for mapping purposes and provides important informa-. (2014) Change Detection of Desert Sand Dunes: A Remote Sensing Approach. Knowledge about changes occurring in dune boundaries and their directions will contribute to the ability in making prediction about wind patterns. If the dunes are changing in direction and are towards populated regions, immediate precautionary steps are to be initiated by the respective authorities. Quantitative methods using remote sensing data are more viable for collecting dune information and monitoring them

Methods

Results

Conclusion