Physically-based land surface segmentation: Theoretical background and outline of interpretations

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1 Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Physical Geography and Geoecology, Comenius University in Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovak Republic
2 Department of Geography, West University of Timisoara, Timişoara, Romania
3 Faculty of Science, Institute of Geography, Pavol Jozef Safarik University in Kosice, Košice, Slovak Republic
4 Department of Geography, Durham University, Durham, United Kingdom
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.27075v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Computational Science, Spatial and Geographic Information Science
Keywords
land surface segmentation, Steady state, Landform equilibrium, Western Carpathians
Copyright
© 2018 Minar et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Minar J, Bandura P, Holec J, Popov A, Drăguţ L, Gallay M, Hofierka J, Kaňuk J, Evans IS. 2018. Physically-based land surface segmentation: Theoretical background and outline of interpretations. PeerJ Preprints 6:e27075v1

Abstract

Incorporation of a physically-based general geomorphological theory directly into the segmentation algorithm is fundamental to physically-based land surface segmentation. Topographical steady state for morphostructural segmentations with five types of elementary forms defined by the principle of equilibrium provides a basis for definition of input variables. Examples of application introduce two new physically-based geomorphometric variables: Index of Steady State (ISS) quantifying the closeness of regions to a topographic steady state; and Index of Slope Disequilibrium (ISD), expressing percentage deviation from an equilibrium state of gravitational Potential Energy of Surface (PES) for mass flow.

Author Comment

This paper was presented at the Geomorphometry 2018 conference in Boulder, CO in August 2018.