Automated Extraction of the Archaeological Tops of Qanat Shafts from VHR Imagery in Google Earth
Qanats in northern Xinjiang of China provide valuable information for agriculturists and anthropologists who seek fundamental understanding of the distribution of qanat water supply systems with regard to water resource utilization, the development of oasis agriculture, and eventually climate change...
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doaj-0a519b06368e479d8badc37f7d40d6852020-11-24T23:26:31ZengMDPI AGRemote Sensing2072-42922014-12-01612119561197610.3390/rs61211956rs61211956Automated Extraction of the Archaeological Tops of Qanat Shafts from VHR Imagery in Google EarthLei Luo0Xinyuan Wang1Huadong Guo2Chuansheng Liu3Jie Liu4Li Li5Xiaocui Du6Guoquan Qian7Key Laboratory of Digital Earth Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100094, ChinaKey Laboratory of Digital Earth Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100094, ChinaKey Laboratory of Digital Earth Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100094, ChinaKey Laboratory of Digital Earth Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100094, ChinaKey Laboratory of Digital Earth Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100094, ChinaKey Laboratory of Digital Earth Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100094, ChinaKey Laboratory of Digital Earth Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100094, ChinaGansu Provincial Institute of Urban Development, Lanzhou 730070, ChinaQanats in northern Xinjiang of China provide valuable information for agriculturists and anthropologists who seek fundamental understanding of the distribution of qanat water supply systems with regard to water resource utilization, the development of oasis agriculture, and eventually climate change. Only the tops of qanat shafts (TQSs), indicating the course of the qanats, can be observed from space, and their circular archaeological traces can also be seen in very high resolution imagery in Google Earth. The small size of the TQSs, vast search regions, and degraded features make manually extracting them from remote sensing images difficult and costly. This paper proposes an automated TQS extraction method that adopts mathematical morphological processing methods before an edge detecting module is used in the circular Hough transform approach. The accuracy assessment criteria for the proposed method include: (i) extraction percentage (E) = 95.9%, branch factor (B) = 0 and quality percentage (Q) = 95.9% in Site 1; and (ii) extraction percentage (E) = 83.4%, branch factor (B) = 0.058 and quality percentage (Q) = 79.5% in Site 2. Compared with the standard circular Hough transform, the quality percentages (Q) of our proposed method were improved to 95.9% and 79.5% from 86.3% and 65.8% in test sites 1 and 2, respectively. The results demonstrate that wide-area discovery and mapping can be performed much more effectively based on our proposed method.http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/6/12/11956qanatsextractionarchaeological tracescircular Hough transformGoogle Earthvery high resolution |
collection |
DOAJ |
language |
English |
format |
Article |
sources |
DOAJ |
author |
Lei Luo Xinyuan Wang Huadong Guo Chuansheng Liu Jie Liu Li Li Xiaocui Du Guoquan Qian |
spellingShingle |
Lei Luo Xinyuan Wang Huadong Guo Chuansheng Liu Jie Liu Li Li Xiaocui Du Guoquan Qian Automated Extraction of the Archaeological Tops of Qanat Shafts from VHR Imagery in Google Earth Remote Sensing qanats extraction archaeological traces circular Hough transform Google Earth very high resolution |
author_facet |
Lei Luo Xinyuan Wang Huadong Guo Chuansheng Liu Jie Liu Li Li Xiaocui Du Guoquan Qian |
author_sort |
Lei Luo |
title |
Automated Extraction of the Archaeological Tops of Qanat Shafts from VHR Imagery in Google Earth |
title_short |
Automated Extraction of the Archaeological Tops of Qanat Shafts from VHR Imagery in Google Earth |
title_full |
Automated Extraction of the Archaeological Tops of Qanat Shafts from VHR Imagery in Google Earth |
title_fullStr |
Automated Extraction of the Archaeological Tops of Qanat Shafts from VHR Imagery in Google Earth |
title_full_unstemmed |
Automated Extraction of the Archaeological Tops of Qanat Shafts from VHR Imagery in Google Earth |
title_sort |
automated extraction of the archaeological tops of qanat shafts from vhr imagery in google earth |
publisher |
MDPI AG |
series |
Remote Sensing |
issn |
2072-4292 |
publishDate |
2014-12-01 |
description |
Qanats in northern Xinjiang of China provide valuable information for agriculturists and anthropologists who seek fundamental understanding of the distribution of qanat water supply systems with regard to water resource utilization, the development of oasis agriculture, and eventually climate change. Only the tops of qanat shafts (TQSs), indicating the course of the qanats, can be observed from space, and their circular archaeological traces can also be seen in very high resolution imagery in Google Earth. The small size of the TQSs, vast search regions, and degraded features make manually extracting them from remote sensing images difficult and costly. This paper proposes an automated TQS extraction method that adopts mathematical morphological processing methods before an edge detecting module is used in the circular Hough transform approach. The accuracy assessment criteria for the proposed method include: (i) extraction percentage (E) = 95.9%, branch factor (B) = 0 and quality percentage (Q) = 95.9% in Site 1; and (ii) extraction percentage (E) = 83.4%, branch factor (B) = 0.058 and quality percentage (Q) = 79.5% in Site 2. Compared with the standard circular Hough transform, the quality percentages (Q) of our proposed method were improved to 95.9% and 79.5% from 86.3% and 65.8% in test sites 1 and 2, respectively. The results demonstrate that wide-area discovery and mapping can be performed much more effectively based on our proposed method. |
topic |
qanats extraction archaeological traces circular Hough transform Google Earth very high resolution |
url |
http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/6/12/11956 |
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