DETECTION OF BARCHAN DUNES IN HIGH RESOLUTION SATELLITE IMAGES

Abstract. Barchan dunes are the fastest moving sand dunes in the desert. We developed a process to detect barchans dunes on High resolution satellite images. It consisted of three steps, we first enhanced the image using histogram equalization and noise reduction filters. Then, the second step proceeds to eliminate the parts of the image having a texture different from that of the barchans dunes. Using supervised learning, we tested a coarse to fine textural analysis based on Kolomogorov Smirnov test and Youden’s J-statistic on co-occurrence matrix. As an output we obtained a mask that we used in the next step to reduce the search area. In the third step we used a gliding window on the mask and check SURF features with SVM to get barchans dunes candidates. Detected barchans dunes were considered as the fusion of overlapping candidates. The results of this approach were very satisfying in processing time and precision.