Forest cover mask from historical topographic maps based on image processing

This study aimed to obtain accurate binary forest masks which might be directly used in analysis of land cover changes over large areas. A sequence of image processing operations was conceived, parameterized and tested using various topographic maps from mountain areas in Poland and Switzerland. Fir...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geoscience data journal 2017-06, Vol.4 (1), p.29-39
Main Authors: Ostafin, K., Iwanowski, M., Kozak, J., Cacko, A., Gimmi, U., Kaim, D., Psomas, A., Ginzler, C., Ostapowicz, K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accuracy
automated feature extraction
Cartography
Color
Colour
Deforestation
Degradation
forest cover mask
Forests
Geographic information systems
Geographical information systems
Image analysis
Image processing
Information systems
Land cover
Land use
Masks
Procedures
Saturation
Saturation (color)
Sequencing
Topographic maps
Topography
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Summary:This study aimed to obtain accurate binary forest masks which might be directly used in analysis of land cover changes over large areas. A sequence of image processing operations was conceived, parameterized and tested using various topographic maps from mountain areas in Poland and Switzerland. First, the input maps were filtered and binarized by thresholding in Hue‐Saturation‐Value colour space. The second step consisted of a set of morphological image analysis procedures leading to final forest masks. The forest masks were then assessed and compared to manual forest boundary vectorization. The Polish topographical map published in the 1930s showed low accuracy which could be attributed to methods of cartographic presentation used and degradation of original colour prints. For maps published in the 1970s, the automated forest extraction performed very well, with accuracy exceeding 97%, comparable to accuracies of manual vectorization of the same maps performed by nontrained operators. With this method, we obtained a forest cover mask for the entire area of the Polish Carpathians, easily readable in any Geographic Information System software.
ISSN:2049-6060
2049-6060
DOI:10.1002/gdj3.46