Mapping off-road tracks and animal paths in protected areas using high-resolution GeoEye-1 panchromatic satellite imagery

Off-road driving activities are common in many protected areas. This study aimed at applying a curvelet-based approach for the automatic extraction, mapping and separation of off-road tracks and animal paths in Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya, using high-resolution GeoEye-1 panchromatic satellite...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of remote sensing 2024-08, Vol.45 (16), p.5425-5442
Main Authors: Chemura, Abel, Lu, Shaoqing, Skidmore, Andrew K., Duporge, Isla, Lee, Stephen J., Yu, Zhaoyang, Ngene, Shadrack, Wang, Tiejun
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
African savannas
All terrain vehicles
Feature extraction
Formability
Fuzzy logic
Geographical information systems
High resolution
human impact
Image resolution
Mapping
Off road vehicles
Protected areas
Redundancy
Remote sensing
Roads
Satellite imagery
Shape
tourism
Tracks (paths)
wildlife habitat
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Summary:Off-road driving activities are common in many protected areas. This study aimed at applying a curvelet-based approach for the automatic extraction, mapping and separation of off-road tracks and animal paths in Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya, using high-resolution GeoEye-1 panchromatic satellite imagery (50 cm). A novel hybrid remote sensing-GIS method comprising three main blocks is proposed: (1) extracting the high-contrast curvilinear feature from curvelet magnitudes derived from the finer scale of curvelet coefficient; (2) extracting the low-contrast curvilinear feature from coarser scale curvelets and refine the shape by deformable active contour (Snake), and (3) categorizing the extracted curvilinear feature into vehicle tracks and animal paths by a fuzzy logic inference system. Results from quantification of extraction and categorization performance of the trails were 77.5% for completeness, 89.2% for correctness, and 4.5% for redundancy, with an overall accuracy of 79.5%. Using grid matching, we find a high correlation between off-road vehicle tracks and animal paths in the area (r = 0.75, p 
ISSN:0143-1161
1366-5901
DOI:10.1080/01431161.2024.2377230