Decennal geomorphic transport from archived time series digital
elevation models: a cookbook for tropical and alpine environments
Abstract
On the seasonal time scale, for accessible locations and when manpower
is available, direct observations and field survey are the most useful
and standard approaches. However very limited studies have been
conducted on direct observation at the decennial to century time-scale
due to observational constrains. Here, we present an open and
reproducible pipeline based on historical aerial images (up to 70 yrs
time span) that includes sensor calibration, dense matching and
elevation reconstruction over two areas of interest that represent
pristine examples for tropical and alpine environments. The Remparts
Canyon and Langevin River in Reunion Island, and the Bossons glacier in
the French Alps share a limited accessibility (in time and space) that
can be overcome only from remote-sensing. We reach a metric to
sub-metric resolution close to the nominal images spatial sampling. This
provides elevation time series with a better resolution to most recent
satellite images such as Pleiades over decennial time period.