Volume 49, Issue 15 pp. 5012-5026
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Automated identification of earthen berms in Western US rangelands from LiDAR-based digital elevation models

Haiqing Xu

Corresponding Author

Haiqing Xu

School of Natural Resources and the Environment, The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA

Correspondence

Haiqing Xu, School of Natural Resources and the Environment, The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA.

Email: [email protected]

Search for more papers by this author
Mary H. Nichols

Mary H. Nichols

USDA-ARS Southwest Watershed Research Center, Tucson, Arizona, USA

Search for more papers by this author
Dana Lapides

Dana Lapides

USDA-ARS Southwest Watershed Research Center, Tucson, Arizona, USA

Search for more papers by this author
Octavia Crompton

Octavia Crompton

USDA-ARS Hydrology Laboratory, Beltsville, Maryland, USA

Search for more papers by this author
First published: 03 November 2024

Abstract

Earthworks such as earthen berms have been constructed across the western US since the late 1800s to mitigate erosion in landscapes where water is both the dominant driver of erosion and the limiting resource for biota. Berms alter hydrologic, geomorphic and ecologic processes by intercepting runoff and altering patterns of water availability in the landscape. Understanding site-specific changes in process dynamics requires accurate mapping of berm locations and knowledge of their condition. This paper presents an automated, object-based framework for identifying earthen berms from 1 m LiDAR-derived digital elevation models in the western US rangelands. Geomorphon, a computer vision tool, was used to classify landforms and identify berm-like landforms, including summits and ridges. Ten geomorphic and geometric attributes associated with each potential berm object were used to develop a machine-learning model for distinguishing berms from natural summits and ridges. The model was trained and applied to independent test sites to identify and map berms. The mapped berms were compared with manually identified reference berms for accuracy assessment. The identification results achieved 79% to 87% recall, 82% to 92% precision and 81% to 89% F-measure. We also explored the influence of training sample selection on model performance and conducted an analysis of attribute relative importance. The automated framework has the potential to be scaled up to larger areas in semi-arid environments.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

The 1 m DEMs are available through the United States Geological Survey 3D Elevation Program (https://apps.nationalmap.gov/downloader/). The reference berm centrelines in all training and test sites are available at https://doi.org/10.4211/hs.683db72af79b4c8cb756207da90efa1a.

The full text of this article hosted at iucr.org is unavailable due to technical difficulties.