Extraction of Surface Properties from a High Accuracy DEM Using Multiscale Remote Sensing Techniques

Research into understanding relationships between landscape pattern and process has been influenced by the introduction of fractal geometry and the advent of fractal analysis. With the increasing availability of high-resolution digital elevation data from increasingly larger areas of the Earth’s surface, together with advances in geocomputation and the field of geomorphometry, the concept of fractals has became even more interesting for local level environmental applications. The work described in this paper aims at investigating the applicability of multifractal based techniques for the representation of high-resolution digital elevation models. A multifractal algorithm, initially developed for image processing, is employed for the construction of a multiresolution representation and for the reconstruction of approximate elevation models with arbitrary accuracy. It is showed to fully describe digital elevation models, while simplifying them. By addressing the issues of structure and scale, the multifractal formalism provides, unlike classical geomorphometrical tools, scale-invariant attributes for characterizing topography and landscapes. It is showed that the multifractal approach is a useful tool to analyze the topography represented by the digital elevation model.