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Hydrological and Ecological Analysis of Topographic Structure and Wetland Landscape

Wu, Qiusheng

Abstract Details

2015, PhD, University of Cincinnati, Arts and Sciences: Geography.
Surface depressions are abundant in topographically complex landscapes, and they exert significant influences on hydrologic, ecological and biogeochemical processes at local and regional scales. The increasing availability of high resolution topographical data makes it possible to resolve small surface depressions. By analogy with the reasoning process of a human interpreter to visually recognize surface depressions from a topographic map, I developed a localized contour tree method that is able to fully exploit high resolution topographical data for detecting, delineating and characterizing surface depressions across scales with a multitude of geometric and topological properties. In this research, I introduced a new concept “pour contour” and a graph theory based contour tree representation for the first time to tackle the surface depression detection and delineation problem. Beyond the depression detection and filling addressed in the previous raster based methods, the localized contour tree method derives the location, perimeter, surface area, depth, spill elevation, storage volume, shape index and other geometric properties for all individual surface depressions as well as the nested topological structures for complex surface depressions. The combination of various geometric properties and nested topological descriptions provides comprehensive and essential information about surface depressions across scales for various environmental applications, such as fine-scale ecohydrologic modelling, limnologic analyses, and wetland studies. The application examples demonstrated that the localized contour tree method is functionally effective and computationally efficient.
Hongxing Liu, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Richard Beck, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Kenneth Hinkel, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Emily Kang, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Tak Yung Tong, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
110 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Wu, Q. (2015). Hydrological and Ecological Analysis of Topographic Structure and Wetland Landscape [Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1439307917

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Wu, Qiusheng. Hydrological and Ecological Analysis of Topographic Structure and Wetland Landscape. 2015. University of Cincinnati, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1439307917.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Wu, Qiusheng. "Hydrological and Ecological Analysis of Topographic Structure and Wetland Landscape." Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1439307917

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)