Geomorphological Mapping - Science topic

Alen Lepirica , PhD

Creating longitudinal river profiles typically involves the following steps and materials:

Remember that the specific techniques and materials you use may vary based on the scale and complexity of your study area and the level of detail required for your research. Additionally, if you have access to a mentor or advisor, they can provide valuable guidance tailored to your specific research objectives.

Just a random thought to myself, about how huge and varied the Earth is, and the structures from mud puddle ripples to mountain ranges, and the many ways we record this by making graphics, from cracks in a crystal to plate boundaries. For me, at least, I need some sort of bounds, and notion of the resolution involved to even get started, I have DEMs from point clouds at centimeter intervals and others at tens of meters, different by five orders of magnitude.

if you mean DEM data, there you might find it:

Good luck!

Dear Jens Kleb Antônio Carlos Pereira dos Santos Junior Omid Vakili Ch , for precision monitoring I use an emlid reach rs2+ GNSS antenna and its app is well supported by apple so this doesn't worry me. My basic idea is to use the iPad as if it were a topographic map on which to digitize with the pen in the field or in the laboratory the various shapes obviously geo-referenced and using as a base map a topographic map in ecw format, export in shape format and load everything into my beloved QGis, but taking full advantage of the potential of the apple pencil. Is this possible? I must also admit that I am a big fan of global mapper. Regards

I am referring you to a worth reading article recently published in the Remote Sensing of Environment by Benjamin Aubrey Robson. He implemented CNN algorithm with morphological and spatial characteristics of rock glaciers using OBIA approach. You will notice how application of deep learning resulted in efficient mapping of rock glaciers otherwise hardly discernable with pixel based classification algorithms in compex terrain settings.

You can access this worth reading article from here;

Automated detection of rock glaciers using deep learning and object-based image analysis

Ayan,

Thanks!

I still have a lot to learn on this topic. 55/5000

I have not yet gone very far on this issue.

Tahnk you Mr J. C. Tarafdar for your help

Have a look:

I think that you must make a supervised classification.

You can make your own spectral signatures from the Landsat images, and then make the classification of the all images.

But I think that you must considers the temporal difference between the images that you are going to use. If this is the case, probably you must repeat this procedure to each image. Other alternative is to make your spectral signatures with a radiometer or ask o someone that could have it, but taking into account this temporal difference.

I think that the supervised classification could give you all the information that you need

Best regards!

You can find old satellite images digitized in GIS at Water Authority or Ministry of Planning. The best option is to purchase recent satellite images and digitize the wadi

To know the details we have to see the meteorological data of at least past 10 years. I general cold desert areas of Lahul spithi of HP, Ladkah, parts of Uttrakhand are rainshaow areas but for characterization of districts we have to see rainfall pattern of a decade or more.

PDF, Thanks to all. Regards

(: Not from me. If you are using ArcMap you should export raster from it with the checkbox "Use renderer". TIFF will then be displayed correctly.

Please check if the boundary between quartenary deposits and the limestone has the same orientation like the other geological boundaries. It could be that the quartenary deposits hide geological units below them.

There is a drilling dtabase of the BGR where you can check this topic:

Dear Ijaz, I am not a geologist but as a geomorphologist I can say that a fault line can be a major driving factor but not every gigantic landslide can be attribuited to faultlines. 

Hi Johannes,

This may not fully help you but there is a software called DionisosFlow (sold by the company Beicip-Franlab) that allows you to model different types of sediment deposits (including colluvial ones, if I well recall). And it should allow you to reconstruct the model through time (so you can visualize the sediments back on the slopes). It is not a free software, but I think you can obtain University/Research licences. If you want to take a look, here is the link to the official website : http://www.beicip.com/stratigraphic-modeling-0

Hi Kaleab,

                 For any process, a threshold value is determined emperically. Same is true for any model or indices. The characteristics of soils of your study area, exposed area of soil surface, climate and presence of aerosols etc. should be considered. You may read the following article

Good luck

Supriti

Please find the cross sections in District resource maps published by Geological Survey of India. You can procure data for required area from GSI. They have mapped Major Structural formations like anticlines, synclines and Faults in the Entire Himalayas. As the geological structures are regional the maps are published in 1:250,000 scale and 1deg*1deg area covered in 1 Sheet.

regards...

Hi Jakub,

Jacob Yde, a colleague of mine, has just published an article about snow distribution in Andes.Please find the link to his article below.

Cheers

Lukasz 

I think, it is important to read this file 

Thanks my freind Jan, No problem.

Here's a graphic I built to help my students learn the difference between plan and profile curvature.

Anicet,

Thank you for your suggestions and for the paper that you attached.  I read it with great interest and see that it may be useful in defining a direction forward for my work.  The paper you shared was also very interesting considering that my work has been focused on placer deposits in West Africa (including Guinea and Cote d'Ivoire). I appreciate your help and guidance.

Pete Chirico

Hi Burak,

you might find activities of ISRIC - World Soil Information of your interest. Especially their data can be useful for your research (global 1km soil grid, etc.)

Regards

Lukas

You could try getting DEMs using ASTER satellite data. Alternatively,USGS may have DEMs with 60 or 100 meter resolution, unless the server is now operated by a different agency. You would have to correct the georeferencing.

A good pair of waders and a metre stick!  Seriously all you need in equipment is what I have said.  However, it would be wise to measure up to a level well above the river surface.  Stretch a metric tape right across from one bank to the other at least 1 metre above the river surface and perfectly level.  Drop a tape with a heavy weight on the bottom end and measure to the taut tape above.  Record measurements at every 1m along the tape, unless there is a sudden change in slope when 0.5m may be more appropriate.  If the stream is deeper than 1.5m you will need to find some way of getting out there - suggest a small rubber dinghy as long as the flow is gentle. 

It is important to choose a reach of river which is straight and even for velocity/discharge.  If you do the cross-profile depths correctly you can use them to build up a graph of river stage measurements.  It can also be used to apply the Manning equation to.  Hope this helps.  If you need more information, do not hesitate to email me at george.strachan12@btinternet.com.

Dear Sir,

Surface texture studies will also throw light on such differentiation.

…sedimentary shores dominated by infaunal bivalves and polychaetes. Macoma balthica probably is everywhere, Mya, Cerastoderma, etc. through most of area. A bit strange for me:   so many papers about North Atlantic intertidal communities lacking general definition of these communities. Especially for soft bottoms

GEBCO are provided as gridded data in a variety of formats: netCDF, Esri ASCII and GeoTiff (INT16).

For gridded data you should use wgs84 (epsg 4326). You can also access the information from a WMS service (epsg 3857).

While studying fire and emergency services, standard operating procedures, and general exposure to construction practices I would say that building design, layout, and material has no consideration towards water storage.

Most organizations focus on having enough water and pressure to "get the job done" and these same organizations have very little say (if any at all) in material used in construction. Organizations such as the NFPA or USFA.

We do however regulate specific items based on toxicity from being burned and burn patterns that will lead to death because of poor building design. The connection to total water supply on a calorific level of materials being burned is very interesting.

(Answers are based on United States references)

Good luck!

Why not? I am wondering if coastal erosion studies have been carried out with moderate resolution satellite data such as Landsat, then why not use Google Earth with much better resolution sometimes even to centimeters of spatial resolution. I came across a Featured article in NASA Earth Observatory on Coastal erosion in the East Coast of US (link attached). Although they have used Landsat Images from the past 30+ years, you can download the kml file (link attached) and study the area with the historical imagery slider on Google Earth. I think it is a very useful image analysis tool. Gives you much better perspective and more importantly you can make quantitative measurements of shoreline change rates. Having said that, I think for Coastal Geologists, Engineers and Planners Google Earth is an excellent tool for studying shore line changes and coastal features. I am sure you will find more examples on the web if you search.

I would be interested to read what others have to add against using Google Earth for coastal erosion studies..

I also suggest you look up desert pavements, which closely resemble your first picture. As someone mentioned before, the clasts in that picture are quite angular, suggesting minimal transport by water. I suggest that the lack of fine sediment is due to aeolian deflation, whereas in the second picture you have an ephemeral stream (someone mentioned wadi already) that periodically sees water flow. Two different processes at work: two different sedimentological signatures. 

We (OpenTopography) co-organized a pair of courses this past spring in Mexico focused on lidar applications to geomorphology and Earth science. All lecture slides and tutorial materials are freely available:

Lidar Derived DEMs applied to Landslide, Fault, Earthquake Rupture, and Landscape Changes - at UNAM in Mexico City: http://www.opentopography.org/index.php/resources/short_courses/15_UNAM

Applications of High Resolution Topographic Data to the Earth Sciences - at CICESE in Ensenada: http://www.opentopography.org/index.php/resources/short_courses/15_NPAC

A drainage basin refers to the whole drainage area of a river up to its confluence e.g. the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna basin. When we say catchment area, it generally means the drainage area up to a certain point on the river, say a discharge observation site e.g. catchment area of Brahmaputra river up to Pandu. Watershed generally refers to the ridge line i.e. drainage divide of the basin, but is also used interchangeably with drainage basin. Thus, drainage basin and watershed can be said to be synonymous, but catchment has a different connotation. 

Landforms classification and representation are strongly influenced  by the scale (regional, basin scale, local) and the application (e.g., morphotectonic, fluvial, applied studies) of the geomorphological mapping. In this regard you should read the third chapter ("Nature and Aims of Geomorphological Mapping") of the book "geomorphological mapping" (Smith et al., 2011). Furthermore you can see different applications of geomorphological mapping in a poster presented at IAG conference in Paris:

Hope this helps.

Best

Tullio

thank you so much

Depending on the size of your study area, I still believe that the human eye, paired with geomorphological experience in landslide field-mapping, is much superior to any - even highly sophisticated - algorithm. And: normally the error rate is significanty lower with visual interpretations than with machine-based interpretations. If, however, you have to cover a very large region, then you might try to apply shape parameters like vertical and horizontal slope curvatures ...

Manfred Buchroithner

Dear Mr. Fayzullaev,

one answer has already addressed the problem. What type of surface do you deal with? Is it the interface between lithology and a permanent water body or is it the interface between the atmosphere and the lithosphere with its various subtypes (e.g. pedosphere)? Subaerial geomorphological processes show an outward appearance different from those of subaquatic and as such the results you may expect are certainly very different and hard to be compared with each other. There are numerous block-diagrams published in books and papers on sequence stratigraphy. To test the quality of these block-diagrams is mostly done by 1-D subcrops (wells). In an subaerial environment you have 2-D and 3-D proofs. In subaquatic environments the geomorphology is strongly impacted by the hydrographic regime. A special type or subtype is the "drowned subaerial geomorphology" where you might have direct connections with the 2-D and 3-D situation on land.

We used slope inclination, slope gradient and slope morphology for combined geomophological-geological  studies. Maybe the paper attached can provide you with some ideas and can be of assistance in both geomorphological settings.

Good luck !

H.G.Dill

Marcos,

one valid criterion, in the lack of clear kinematic indicators, is to look for possible pre-faulting/fracturing features that could be used as markers. In the case of a strike-slip fault, the marker appears truncated, offset and displaced.In the case of a large fracture, the marker is truncated, but not offset and displaced. I hope this could be a simple criterion to answer your question.

Best wishes,

Enrico

For geomorphological mapping or for that matter a geological mapping, moderate resolution multi-spectral imagery may not be very useful if used in isolation. Usually it works better in combination with a colour-shaded DEM for example, in combination with a pan-sharpened imagery and an anaglyph image. I've attached all of the mentioned imagery as an example for you to weigh the difference and the significance of each in relation to the objective. Usually, I found that a colour-shaded topographic image is an excellent starting point to map geomorphological units which may not be visible/obvious at all in a Landsat ETM multi-spectral imagery. In the attached example you can quite clearly make out the alluvial fans which are at the base of the Lower Himalayas on which Dehradhun city is situated, which is otherwise not so apparent in the ETM multi-spectral imagery. With some proficiency you can even distinguish the relative ages of the alluvial fans which are found in between the Siwalik Range and the Lower Himalayas. You can also see them in the Indogangetic plains. The river channels are easily discernible in the hill-shaded image and the variations in the intricate drainage patterns are conspicuous enough to pinpoint the differences in underlying lithology. Often with multi-spectral colour composites the terrain may not be highlighted because of the presence of vegetation, anthropogenic borders etc. Have a look at the color composite ETM where a clear boundary (human made) is identified along the south face of the Siwalik Range, whereas if you compare the same location in the color-shaded DEM, you will not find it. These are only some of the advantages of using a colour-shaded DEM in conjunction with a colour composite multi-spectral imagery for geomorphological mapping where the terrain information is more valuable than a land cover. For geological mapping too, these data sources are superlative authorities, wherein anticlines, synclines, strike-slip faults, lineaments, flatirons (indicators of bedding planes) and many other geological features are observed with marked distinction. Therefore, I think the key to a first-rate geomorphological mapping is a blend of various data sources. I'm not sure what is the scale of your study area, nevertheless I believe ETM/OLI from Landsat together with a DEM can be a good starting point for a fine and direct geomorphological mapping. My views are open for criticism and discussion.

There is a built-in function which does excatly what you want. You need a map of the stations and a file with the time series.

timeinputscalar(Raintimeseries, pzones);

you can't remove the cloud from satellite image. maybe, you can choose other one without cloud

Thanks for your reply Bill. I'm looking for a product with about 1km spatial resolution and daily temporal resolution. However, a 5km, 10 day product would still be very useful.

I'm really looking for an "off the shelf" type product that has already been documented, tested and validated.

Imtiaz

Hi Andrij,

you can get a free set of ArcGIS geomorphic mapping symbols for high mountain environments here:

It is conceptually based on the German "GMK Hochgebirge". Maybe this article gives some basic ideas:

Here are some example maps of the standard GMK:

Hope this helps!

Best,

David

The first feature in the north can be called as Wadi Rimah and the second feature can be called Wadi Adwasir both formed gravel fans or and lake beds underneath sand sheets

Joe Wheaton (now at Utah State I think) has done some fantastic work on this topic.  I think one short answer to your question is that detrending the data allows for integration with floodplain DEMs and thus spatial hydrologic or other habitat modeling.  I'm not trying for self-promotion here.  But, you might find the attached paper interesting and helpful.

cheers,

Ray

Thank you for the answer.

Please follow exactly what scrolled as possible?

Because this software is not made for complex raster operations, has mostly Display.

You might also want to find out why the gypsum is below the limestone.

Gypsum is the byproduct when limestone is attacked by sulfuric acid, and the

carbonate ion is replaced by the sulfate ion. ( Calcium carbonate becomes

calcium sulfate in the presence of hydrogen sulfide gas and water.

Perhaps the limestone is being attacked in place from the bottom upward

by H2S from below.

Thank you very much, I have since been offered one that I did used in my work, I am not sure how to remove the question now. But thank you and Kindest regards

i work on feature extraction from LiDAR DTM, and we succesfully applied LiDAR DTMS and geomorphometric parameters (I.e. Curvature or residual topography) in floodplains for anthropogenic feature extractions (the paper is published on Hydrological Processes and the full text is also uploaded on my profile here on research gate, if you are interested), and in general, we succesfully tested LiDAR DTMs and geomorphic parameters for feature extraction in mountains. maybe the same type of approach considered in floodplains could be used to identify anthropogenic relief....

Genevieve

Google: National Speleological Society

click on: the second listing

click on: Find a Grotto

click on: Georgia

there are several listed in Georgia, Alabama,

Tennessee,

Call and Ask questions

Cave exploration is not something you do alone.

For safety and a lot of other reasons, including

cold, wet, slippery , falls, Hypothermia, and

having fun, it is done in groups, and the groups

get you access to cavers, and professional people

that are interested in what you are interested in.

The Networking is very important.

Can you describe in more detail the profile that your referring to?

Ok, what you can do before bying PhotoModeler is testing your data with the 123D Catch from Autodesk (see http://www.123dapp.com/catch) this will give you a rough Idea (for free) of the capability of such solution. Photomodeler coud be better or not compared to 123D catch but results should be about the same. 123D catch is a good way to practice and also to learn about how to take good picture for such purpose. Usually, this gives you good results but this all depend on the main purpose, and how good are your input data. I give you an example I made from my Journey in Jordan : Petra in 3D http://dralucas.geophysx.org/stereo.html

From my point of view, the Leica stations have a wide versatility. Also Trimble stations. It is probably for this reason that these stations may be slightly more expensive. The Japanese-made total stations tend to be somewhat cheaper and are almost at the height of the Leica or Trimble. I'll decide by Topcon. If the cost is very high, there is always the possibility to go to the second hand market, to a dealer who provides equipment warranty.

Indeed you can't, but if you can work on the floodplain evolution, you could do some relative dating. If your abandoned channels and the rest of the floodplain is vegetated, you can always used dendrochronology to constrain your chronology.

I agree completely with the comment from Filippo! From my opinion, it is not necessary to take the number of landslide points and non-landslide points equally, as it is not the case in nature. It is good in some cases but not in others. What really matter is the ratio of landslides over whole area, e.x. if the landslides affected only 10% of your study area, then the appropriate landslide points should be somewhere at, saying, 10-20% of your dataset.

In the case of my landslide points are limited (scarce), after some trials and I see that my regression model depends heavily on the balance of landslide and non-landslide data, I will try other methods (like decision tree, neural network or simple index overlay, Bayes…)