Study On Identifying Rock Glacier Based On Remote Sensing And Deep Learning

Rock glacier is a geomorphological landform with ligule accumulation texture that formed from mixture of ice and stone.It is widely distributed in the alpine mountains all over the world,and also in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in China.Investigating the distribution of rock glaciers can provide effective information for studying the environment and climate change in cold regions.The development of remote sensing technology provides an effective way for identifying rock glacier.However,its execution is difficult due to the large area of rock glacier distribution as well as the similarity between rock glacier and its surroundings in spectral surface reflectance.Comparing to the traditional visual interpretation approach,this paper presented a more effective method for automatically identifying rock glaciers in high-resolution images.The method was implemented by integrating the Deep Learning development framework to build the model through interactive training from the Res Net network and Deep Lab v3+network.The model was then applied to identify rock glaciers in Gao Fen-1 images that collected in West Nyainqentanglha Mountains and Bing satellite images that collected in Tuergendaban Mountains,where are rich of rock glaciers.And this paper also analyzed the differentiation regularity of rock glaciers in the two study area.Accuracy of the results were assessed by comparing to human interpreted data.It reported 98.72%Overall Accuracy,89.48%Producer’s Accuracy,and 81.77%User’s Accuracy in model based on Res Net network,and MIo U 82.28%in model based on Deep Lab v3+network.The results suggesting that the presented method is very effective for identifying rock glaciers,and it provides a potential capability for mapping the distribution of rock glacier in large areas.There were 96 rock glaciers identified in the West Nyainqentanglha Mountains.The average elevation is 5335m,and the average elevation of single rock glacier is between4992～5637m.The covering area is 25.41km~2,and the average area is 0.26km~2.The area of a single rock glacier is between 0.03 and 1.17km~2.The average length is 613m,and the length of a single rock glacier is 140～2318m.The average width is 516m,and the width of a single rock glacier is 140～4764m.Among them,there were 32 tongue moraine rock glacier,6 leaf moraine rock glacier,35 tongue talus rock glacier and 23leaf talus rock glacier.There were 50 rock glaciers identified in the Tuergendaban Mountains.The average elevation is 4752m,and the average elevation of a single rock glacier is between 4584and 5172m.The covering area is 44.31km~2,and the average area is 0.887km~2.The average area of a single rock glacier is between 0.045 and 3.052km~2.The average length is 1235m,and the length of a single rock glaicer is 210～3055m.The average width is674m,and the width of a single rock glaicer is 216～1521m.The rock glaciers in this area are all tongue moraine rock glaciers.