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A River Channel Extraction Method for Urban Environments Based on Terrain Transition Lines
Author(s) -
Qin Lianjie,
Xu Wei,
Tian Yugang,
Chen Bo,
Wang Siyue
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
water resources research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.863
H-Index - 217
eISSN - 1944-7973
pISSN - 0043-1397
DOI - 10.1029/2018wr023095
Subject(s) - terrain , digital elevation model , channel (broadcasting) , lidar , remote sensing , elevation (ballistics) , geology , flood myth , feature (linguistics) , hydrology (agriculture) , geography , computer science , cartography , geotechnical engineering , computer network , linguistics , philosophy , archaeology , geometry , mathematics
A river channel network is an important geomorphological feature in a catchment. A method to extract river channels in urban environments from a high‐resolution digital elevation model (DEM) is introduced in this paper. The method utilizes terrain transition lines to delineate channel networks. First, terrain transition lines are extracted from the DEM. Then, shallow road ditches are removed based on elevation from the terrain transition lines, and then, noise is removed using the region growing method. Subsequently, most of the road ditches are removed by pixel block expansion, and then, the nonchannel pixels are removed by fitting a quadratic surface. The computational efficiency and accurate localization of river channel extraction using the proposed method is demonstrated using light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data for an urban environment in Johnson County, Iowa. The proposed method is effective for extracting channels and removing road ditches in this urban environment. A potential application of this method is to provide the river channels required for riverine flood modeling and geomorphological studies.