Multiscale Landforms Classification Based on UAV Datasets

Abstract

The advance uses of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) in geosciences by producing very high spatial resolution Digital Surface Models (DSMs), the various UAV flight altitudes led to different scales DSM. In this paper, we analyzed terrain forms using Topographic Position Index (TPI), landforms extracted by Iwahashi and Pike method and morphometric features of three different spatial resolutions DSM processed from different UAV flights height datasets of the same study area.

Topographic Position Index (TPI) is an algorithm for measuring topographic slope positions and to automate landform classi?cations, Iwahashi and Pike had developed an unsupervised method for classification of Landforms and we have used the techniques developed by Peuker and Douglas, a method classifying terrain surfaces into 7 classes.

Landforms extracted from the three indices listed above at the three flight heights of 120, 240 and 360 meters and compared with each other to understand the generalization of different scale and to highlight which landforms are more affected by the scale changes.