Abstract
The use of digital elevation models (DEMs) has become much more widespread in recent years, thanks to technological developments that facilitate their creation and availability. To exploit these data, a set of processing techniques has been developed to reveal the characteristic structures of the relief. This paper presents a new method based on the volumetric approach, and two derivatives. These methods are evaluated on three DEMs at different resolutions and scales: a freely accessible DEM from JAXA DEM covering part of North-East Tanzania, a DEM corresponding to rock art in Siberia, and a DEM of an archaeological Bronze Age funeral structure. Our results show that with the volumetric approach, concave and convex areas are clearly visible, with contrast marking slope breaks, while the overall relief is attenuated. Furthermore, the use of volume reduces the impact of noise, which can occur when processing is based on sky visibility (e.g., sky-view factor or positive openness) or second derivatives. Finally, the volumetric approach allows the implementation of a vertical exaggeration factor, the result of which will enhance the particular characteristics of the landscape. The present study comes with a standalone executable program for Windows, a QGIS plugin, and the scripts written in Python, including GPU compute capability (via CUDA) for faster processing.
Highlights
The study of landforms is an essential step in many research fields, such as geomorphology, geology, hydrology, archaeology, civil engineering, and mining
Quantitative analyses are mainly based on digital elevation models (DEMs), a generic term for models including vegetation or human structures, as well as those describing only ground elevation
Both are available in the form of a raster grid. Nowadays, such resources can be produced by many different techniques, with photogrammetry, synthetic aperture radar interferometry (InSAR or IfSAR), and light detection and ranging (LiDAR) among the most common
Summary
The study of landforms is an essential step in many research fields, such as geomorphology, geology, hydrology, archaeology, civil engineering, and mining. A set of procedures has been developed to highlight geomorphological features (e.g., valleys, peaks, and ridges), and elevation anomalies of anthropogenic origin (e.g., ancient or recent quarries, mines, and walls) [1] These procedures are based on color cast [2], differential geometry including slope and different expressions of curvature [1,3,4,5], trend removal [6,7], sky visibility [8,9,10], artificial illumination [11,12,13,14], pattern analysis [15], and aspect changes [16], to cite the main algorithms
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