Application of Opening by Reconstruction to Characterize the Size Distribution of Catchments Extracted from Digital Elevation Models
S. Dinesh, Jalan Venice Raya · 2007
In this paper, concepts of mathematical morphology are employed to characterize the size distributions of catchments extracted from digital elevation models (DEMs). First, opening by reconstruction is performed iteratively on the binarised catchment image. The number of extracted catchments remaining and removed, and the total remaining catchment area after each iteration is computed. The well marked peak in the plot of the kernel size and the number of catchments removed indicated the dominant size of the extracted catchments. A power law relationship was derived between the total area of remaining catchments and the number of remaining catchments. This power law arises as a consequence of the fractal properties of the size distribution of the extracted catchments.