Lidar-Based Morphometry of Conical Hills in Temperate Karst Areas in Slovenia

Abstract

Conical hills, or residual hills, are frequently mentioned landforms in the context of humid tropical karsts as they are dominant surface elements there. Residual hills are also present in temperate karsts, but generally in a less remarkable way. These landforms have not been thoroughly addressed in the literature to date, therefore the present article is the first attempt to morphometrically characterize temperate zone residual karst hills. We use the methods already developed for doline morphometry, and we apply them to the “inverse” topography using LiDAR-based digital terrain models (DTMs) of three Slovenian sample areas. The characteristics of hills and depressions are analysed in parallel, taking into account the rank of the forms. A common feature of hills and dolines is that, for both types, the empirical distribution of planform areas has a strongly positive skew. After logarithmic transformation, these distributions can be approximated by Inverse Gaussian, Normal, and Weibull distributions. Along with the rank, the planform area and vertical extent of the hills and dolines increase similarly. High circularity is characteristic only of the first-rank forms for both dolines and hills. For the sample areas, the the hill area ratios and the doline area ratios have similar values, but the total extent of the hills is slightly larger in each case. A difference between dolines and hills is that the shapes of hills are more similar to one another than those of dolines. The reason for this is that the larger, closed depressions are created by lateral coalescence, while the hills are residual forms carved from large blocks. Another significant difference is that the density of dolines is much higher than that of hills. This article is intended as a methodological starting point for a new topic, aiming at the comprehensive study of residual karst hills across different climatic areas.

LiDAR-Based Morphometry of Dolines in Aggtelek Karst (Hungary) and Slovak Karst (Slovakia)

“…However, when a tiny depression is found within a larger depression, then it is more realistic to delineate the larger depression as a doline. Finally, we note that complex (nested) depressions can be technically characterized by the "sinkhole rank" (see [15,97] for details).…”

“…In our analysis, in the case of topographic maps, we delineated the dolines using the OCC method, while in the case of LiDAR-based DTMs, dolines were defined by the level of the lowermost point of the doline rim. The details of the delineation algorithm are presented in previous articles [12,15,18,97], so only the major steps and the flowchart (Figure 3) of the algorithm are presented here without further details. Closed depressions, as mentioned above, are often "nested".…”

Bozdağ (Karaburun Yarımadası) Kütlesi Üzerinde Dolinlerin Morfotektonik Gelişimi

“…Dolin morfometrisi çalışmalarında büyük oranda 1/25.000 ölçekli topoğrafya haritaları kullanılmaktadır (Day, 1983;Denizman, 2003;Öztürk 2018a). Ancak uzaktan algılama alanında yaşanan gelişmelerin bir sonucu olarak farklı çözünürlükte sayısal yükseklik modellerinin (SYM) üretilmeye başlanmasıyla birlikte bu yüksek çözünürlüklü SYM verileri üzerinden otomatik ya da yarı otomatik çıkarım tekniklerine göre dolinleri çizilmeye ve bunlara göre morfometrik özellikler belirlenmeye başlanmıştır (Chen vd., 2018;Telbisz 2021)or residual hills, are frequently mentioned landforms in the context of humid tropical karsts as they are dominant surface elements there. Residual hills are also present in temperate karsts, but generally in a less remarkable way.…”

“…Çözünürlüğü 1 ile 90 metre arasında değişen LİDAR, ASTER, ALOS, PALSAR, SRTM gibi küresel verilerden otomatik ya da çıkarım tekniklerine göre çok sayıda dolin morfometrisi çalışması yapılmıştır (Siart vd., 2009;Jeanpert vd. 2016;Jones vd., 2018;Theilen-Willige, 2018;Zumpano vd., 2019;Qiu vd., 2020;Telbisz, 2021)this paper examines the application and quality of digital elevation models (SRTM and ASTER DEMs. Küresel ya da ulusal ölçekte ulaşılabilinen bu verilerin yanı sıra insansız hava araçlarından üretilen sayısal yükseklik modellerinden de otomatik çıkarım yöntemi ile dolinler belirlenmeye başlanmıştır (Utlu ve Öztürk 2023).…”

On the Use of Tri-Stereo Pleiades Images for the Morphometric Measurement of Dolines in the Basaltic Plateau of Azrou (Middle Atlas, Morocco)

“…The detection of karst morphologies from DEMs processing is a well-known methodology, largely applied for geomorphological studies, risk and geohazard assessment, and land use management [4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. Studies based on the comparison between DEM and fieldbased data have demonstrated that the use of digital images with an appropriate spatial resolution generally provides reliable results in the morphometric characterization of sinkholes [11,12].…”