Blog

Geospatial Technologies & Geomorphological Mapping
October 15 to 17, 2010 - University of South Carolina - Columbia, SC

Tentative Program Schedule (subject to revision)

Friday, October 15th

• 11:30-12:30 Registration
• 12:30-5:00 Field trip to Congaree National Monument led by John Kupfer, Kimberly Meitzen, and Will Graf
• 6:30-10:00 pm Icebreaker & Registration in Top of Carolina, Capstone Building (revolving restaurant with overview of Columbia)

Saturday, October 16

• 7:30-8:30 Continental Breakfast & Poster Setup
• 7:30-10:00 Registration and proceedings volume sales
  • 8:30-10:00 Session I - INTRODUCTIONS
  • 8:30 – 8:40 Welcome to Columbia – Will Graf, Interim Associate Dean for Research, College of Arts and Sciences, USC
  • 8:40 – 9:10 Convocation: Taking the Measure of a Landscape - Alan D. Howard, University of Virginia.
  • 9:10 – 9:40 Introduction: Concepts, Issues, and Research Directions - Michael P. Bishop, University of Nebraska, Omaha; Stephen Walsh, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Allan James, University South Carolina.
• 9:40 – 10:10 Coffee Break & Poster Session I
• 10:10-12:30 Session II – REMOTE SENSING, Methods and Technology
  • 10:10 – 10:40 Mapping Surface Mineralogy Using Imaging Spectrometry - Fred A. Kruse , University of Nevada, Reno.
  • 10:40 – 11:10 Airborne and Terrestrial LiDAR Technology for Assessing Topography, Michael Hodgson and John R. Jensen, University South Carolina.
  • 11:10 – 11:40 Microwave Remote Sensing, Scott Hensley, Jet Propulsion Lab.
  • 11:40 – 12:10 Recent Developments in Geophysical Methods for Landform Studies - Remke L. Van Dam, Michigan State University.
  • 12:10 – 12:30 Discussion
• 12:30-1:30 Lunch (BGS Steering Committee Meeting)
• 1:30-3:30 Session III – REMOTE SENSING, Applications
  • 1:30 – 2:00 Making Riverscapes Real - Patrice Carbonneau, University of Durham; Mark A. Fonstad, Texas State University, San Marcos; W. Andrew Marcus, University of Oregon; S. J. Dugdale, APEM Ltd., Riverview, Embankment Business Park, Heaton Mersey, United Kingdom.
  • 2:00 – 2:30 High-Resolution Mapping and Modeling of Floodplains - James Brasington, University of Aberystwyth, UK.
  • 2:30 – 3:00 Snow distribution in the Wind River Range, Wyoming: the influence of topography and regional climate – Dorothy Hall, NASA
• 3:00 – 3:30 Coffee Break & Poster Session II
• 3:30 – 5:00 Session IV – GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SCIENCE
  • 3:30 – 4:00 Geomorphometry, Landform Representations, and Geomorphic Mapping - Ian Evans, Durham University, UK.
  • 4:00 – 4:30 Digital Terrain Modeling - John Wilson, University of Southern California.
  • 4:30 – 4:30 Scientific Visualization of Landscape and Landforms - Helena Mitasova, North Carolina State University.
  • 4:30 – 5:00 Discussion
• 7:00-9:00 pm Banquet
  • Spatial Scale in Geomorphology - Jonathan D. Phillips, University of Kentucky.

Sunday, October 17th

• 8:00-9:00 Continental Breakfast & Poster Session III
• 9:00-12:00 Session V –GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SCIENCE
  • 9:00 – 9:30 Spatial Analysis and Mapping in Geomorphology - Thomas R. Allen, East Carolina University.
  • 9:30 – 10:00 Soil Mapping and Modeling - Jon Pelletier, University of Arizona.
  • 10:00 – 10:30 GIS-based Hydrological Modeling and Mapping - Lawrence Band, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
  • 10:30 – 11:00 Landscape Evolution Modeling and Mapping - Peter Koons, University of Maine
  • 11:00 – 11:30 Geospatial Analysis and Time: Historical Reconstructions and Change Detection - Allan James and Subhajit Ghoshal, University of South Carolina, Mary Megison, Michael Singer, and Rolf Aalto.
  • 11:30-12:00 - Discussion
• 12:00 Adjourn

Short title: streams_error

A Sextante implementation of these algorithms called FlowTools can be obtained here (contributed by Daniel Nüst). The project report can be downloaded as a PDF. You can access the Eclipse project “flowTools” in the following public Subversion repository:

http://svn.xp-dev.com/svn/FlowTools/

You can also download an initial version (might be outdated!) of the project folder as a zip file (12).

Purpose and use:

Extraction of stream networks from a DEM using error propagation technique.

Programming environment: R / S language
Status of work: Public Domain
Reference: On the uncertainty of stream networks derived from elevation data: the error propagation approach
Data set name: Baranja hill

Attachment:

streams_error_0.zip

stream_sims_0.zip

Wolfgang Schwanghart from the Geographisches Institut, Universität Basel has recently released a toolbox that allows analysis of relief and flow pathways in digital elevation models in Matlab. The toolbox can be used to visualize DEMs, extract simple derivatives, run (and modify) flow models, delineate drainage basins, produce hydrographs and implement similar DEM-based hyrdological analysis. For more info see the User Guide to TopoToolbox.

When you use TopoToolbox in your work, please refer to this publication:

Schwanghart, W., Kuhn, N. J. (2010): TopoToolbox: a set of Matlab functions for topographic analysis. Environmental Modelling & Software, in press.

Short title:geomorph

For a complete description of the processing steps, see the original publication.

Purpose and use:

Automated extraction of geomorphological features using digital elevation data: case study Drente; outputs: extracted classes and summary statistics; various plots and images.

Programming environment:R / S language
Status of work:Public Domain
Reference:{Semi-automated identification and extraction of geomorphological features using digital elevation data}
Data set name:Boschoord case study

Attachment:

maps_KML.zip

FYI: a short report from Geomorphometry 2009 by Bob MacMillan (ISRIC) published in the Pedometron newsletter #28:

“The main purpose of my participation was to keep informed about other efforts, similar to GlobalSoilMap.net, that have a interest in processing digital elevation data and other digital data sets globally or at least for extremely large areas. This conference actually contained a large number of presentations of direct relevance for the GlobalSoilMap.net project. Perhaps first and foremost were the descriptions of efforts being undertaken in Australia (Gallant and Read) and Europe (Köthe and Bock) to process SRTM DEM data at 30 m (Australia) and 90 m (Europe) grid resolution to reduce artefacts and produce a filtered and cleaned DEM that is more suitable for use to produce inputs for the GlobalSoilMap.net project. Both of these presentations highlighted the significant advantages that can be realised by applying a series of filtering and conditioning routines to the original raw SRTM DEM data. It is obvious that similar procedures would prove equally useful if applied to SRTM DEM data sets for other parts of the world under the jurisdiction of other GlobalSoilMap.net nodes. Gallant has offered to help with efforts in other Nodes if asked.

Also of great interest were several projects that demonstrated that it is indeed possible to process and produce digital output for global scale digital data sets, including global scale SRTM DEM data sets. Reuter and Nelson presented a description of WorldTerrain, a contribution of the Global Geomorphometric Atlas. Peter Guth described processing of global scale SRTM data to identify and classify organized linear landforms (dunes). Peter also provided examples of multiple scale analysis and illustrated what you get to “see” from DEMs of 1 m, 100 m and 2 km grid resolution. Guth intends to publish the many different grids of DEM derivatives he produced for his project and make these processed data available for free and widespread use by others. Marcello Gorini described a physiographic classification of the ocean flood using a multi-resolution geomorphometric approach.

Several authors presented methods that may prove of interest to the GlobalSoilMap.net project. Gallant and Hutchinson described a differential equation for computing specific catchment area that could be applied to produce an improved terrain covariate for use in the GlobalSoilMap.net project. Similarly, Peckham, gave a new algorithm for creating DEMs with smooth elevation profiles that could be used to condition rough SRTM or GDEM data sets to smooth out noise and produce more hydrologically plausible surfaces. This algorithm was of particular interest to the GlobalSoilMap.net project because it appeared to be able to introduce hydrologically and geomorphologically relevant detail into 90 m SRTM DEMs of relatively low spatial detail.

Romstad and Etzelmuller described a new approach for segmenting hillslopes into landform elements by applying a watershed algorithm to a surface defined by the total curvature at a point instead of the raw elevation value. The resulting watersheds were bounded by lines of maximum curvature, effectively structuring each hillslope into components partitioned by lines of maximum local curvature. This is harder to explain than to understand when illustrated but it is remarkably simple to implement and may provide a new way of automatically segmenting hillslopes in a simple and efficient fashion.

Metz and others presented an algorithm for fast and efficient processing of massive DEMs to extract drainage networks and flow paths. This is of considerable interest and relevance to the GlobalSoilMap.net project because of the project’s need to process SRTM data globally to compute hydrological flow networks and various indices that are computed based on flow networks (e.g. elevation above channel, distance from divide). This algorithm can process data sets of hundreds of millions of cells (11,424 rows by 13,691 cols) in a few minutes instead of a few days (or not at all for some algorithms that fail on data sets this large).

Overall, this was an excellent conference, dominated by leading edge research in the area of geomorphic processing of digital elevation data that is of direct relevance and interest to the GlobalSoilMap.net project. We have much to learn from these researchers and much to benefit from maintaining contacts and working relationships with them.”