Title
A Comparison of Pixel- and Object-Based Glacier Classification With Optical Satellite Images
Abstract
Precise information about the size and spatial distribution of glaciers is needed for many research applications, for example water resources evaluation, determination of glacier specific changes in area and volume, and for calculation of the past and future contribution of glaciers to sea-level change. However, mapping glacier outlines is challenging even under optimal conditions due to time consuming manual corrections of wrongly classified pixels. In the last decades, advantages in computer technologies have led to the development of object-based-image analysis (OBIA), an image classification technique that can be seen as an alternative to the common pixel-based image analysis (PBIA). In this study we compare the performance of OBIA with PBIA for glacier mapping in three test regions with challenging mapping conditions. In both approaches, a ratio image was created to map clean snow and ice while thermal and slope information was used to assist in the identification of debris-covered ice. The mapping results of OBIA have overall a ~ 3% higher quality than PBIA, in particular in the processing of debris-covered glaciers where OBIA has a 12% higher accuracy. The post-processing possibilities in OBIA (e.g., the application of a processing loop and neighborhood analysis) are especially powerful to improve the final classification. This leads also to a reduction of the workload for the manual corrections, which are still required to achieve a sufficient accuracy.
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.1109/JSTARS.2013.2274668
Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, IEEE Journal of
Keywords
Field
DocType
geophysical image processing,glaciology,hydrological techniques,image classification,remote sensing,obia post processing,pbia,clean ice mapping,clean snow mapping,debris covered ice,glacier outline mapping,glaciers size distribution,glaciers spatial distribution,image classification technique,object based glacier classification,object based image analysis,optical satellite images,pixel based glacier classification,pixel based image analysis,slope information,thermal information,aster,landsat,debris-cover,digital elevation model,glacier,object-oriented-mapping,pixel-based-mapping,sea-ice,shape,accuracy,earth,sea ice,satellites
Satellite,Glacier,Remote sensing,Glaciology,Pixel,Contextual image classification,Mathematics,Snow
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
7
3
1939-1404
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
5
0.63
3
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Rastner, P.192.25
Bolch, T.282.45
Claudia Notarnicola316640.15
Frank Paul4195.54