EGU is about to start and besides many presentation and meeting Paolo Tarolli, Tobias Heckmann and Wolfgang Schwanghart offer a hands on workshop on Digital Terrain Analysis of Anthropogenic Landscapes (13:30–15:00 in Room L4/5). Please see below some information on the course.
– written by Paolo Tarolli (University of Padova) –
Humans are among the most prominent geomorphic agents, redistributing land surface, and causing drastic changes to the geomorphic organization of the landscape (e.g. intensive agriculture, urbanization, mining, roads construction), with direct consequences on land degradation and watershed response.
High-resolution topography (HRT) can be useful for engineered landscapes, where the anthropic forcing related to human activities may affect natural processes (Tarolli, 2014). HRT could play a strategic and helpful role, through the recognition of human-induced geomorphic and anthropogenic features, and the connected erosion.
In this workshop, we will explore various techniques to extract and analyze anthropogenic features from high-resolution Digital Terrain Models (DTMs), and to account for the problems associated with such features in anthropogenic landscapes. Basic knowledge in Matlab® and GIS, and the availability of a laptop are an advantage but they are not a requirement to attend the workshop. Attendants at the beginning of the workshop will receive teaching materials and guidelines for the proposed methodologies.
Specifically, we will aim at:
- Extracting channel levees in floodplains, and terraces walls on hillslopes applying the semi-automatic techniques.
- Identifying terraces/road induced erosion/landslides.
- Automatic detection of bank erosion in agricultural drainage networks.
Upon course termination attendants will be awarded with a specific certificate of attendance signed by the EGU – GM division President and by the workshop Instructor.
References
Tarolli, P., Sofia, G. (2016). Human topographic signatures and derived geomorphic processes across landscapes. Geomorphology, 255, 140-161.
Tarolli, P. (2014). High-resolution topography for understanding Earth surface processes: opportunities and challenges. Geomorphology, 216, 295-312.