Archaeological site identification from open access multispectral imagery: Cloud computing applications in Northern Kurdistan (Iraq)

This paper presents the results of an archaeological survey carried out in the Navkur Plain, Iraqi Kurdistan, as part of the ‘Asingeran Archaeological Project’. The survey was prepared using remote sensing products accessed via Google Earth Engineⓒ, a large-scale cloud computing service freely available to the scientific community that allows processing remote sensing big data. Outputs generated with a multitemporal approach are particularly successful for archaeological research, because it is possible to maximize the visibility of archaeological sites, improving their detection. Multispectral imagery from Landsat 5, Landsat 7 and Sentinel-2 collections were used and processed, testing their utility for finding unknown ancient settlements in the densely studied area of Northern Mesopotamia. Seventeen new sites were discovered in an already surveyed area of limited size (<100 km2), showing the potentialities of this method. The advantages of cloud computing for Near Eastern Archaeology and the results of the survey are also presented and discussed

Errors-in-Variables Anisotropic Extended Orthogonal Procrustes Analysis

This letter presents a novel total least squares (TLS) solution of the anisotropic row-scaling Procrustes problem. The ordinary LS Procrustes approach finds the transformation parameters between origin and destination sets of observations minimizing errors affecting only the destination one. In this letter, we introduce the errors-in-variables model in the anisotropic Procrustes analysis problem and present a solution that can deal with the uncertainty affecting both sets of observations. The algorithm is applied to solve the image exterior orientation problem. Experiments show that the proposed TLS method leads to an accuracy in the parameters estimation that is higher than the one reached with the ordinary LS anisotropic Procrustes solution when the number of points, whose coordinates are known in both the image and the external systems, is small

Multispectral and high-resolution images as sources for archaeological surveys. New data, from Iraqi Kurdistan

The paper presents the results of a two-year archaeological survey carried out in the Iraqi Kurdistan, namely within the Navkur Plain that has been extensively explored by the University of Udine since 2012. The surveys were planned in advance using Remote Sensing products available online and processed with Google Earth Engine, a large-scale cloud computing service specifically designed to process geospatial big data and especially satellite imagery. Images from Landsat 5, Landsat 7 and Sentinel-2 platforms were selected, processed and assessed. After two years, an overall number of 46 new and previously unknown sites have been localized and surveyed, contributing to the knowledge of the past history of this portion of the Kurdistan region and testing the use of Remote Sensing cloud-computing applications in the context of Near Eastern archaeological research

Is that a relict rock glacier?

The distribution of rock glaciers is often used to investigate the occurrence of permafrost inmountain areas and to understand their climate and paleoclimate evolution. This requires the creation of regional and global inventories capable of discriminating active and relict landforms in order to forecast the presence or absence of ice in the ground. In this paper, geomorphological, geophysical and microclimatic surveys are performed on a rock glacier of the Carnic Alps (Eastern European Alps). In the classification currently used for implementing regional inventories of permafrost evidence in the Alps, this rock glacier would be defined as relict. However the geophysical, climatological and geomorphological results indicate that internal ice is widespread in large portions of the rock glacier. These are generally interpreted as ice in pore spaces and local ice lenses, probably without layers of massive ice. Moreover the occurrence of ice during the maximum thawing season at depths b15 m, assumed here as the depth of zero annual amplitude, suggests that the ice occurring within the rock glacier is related to current cryotic conditions due to density driven air flow (i.e. the chimney effect). This research demonstrates that the current altitudinal limit of alpine permafrost can be locally several hundreds of meters lower than forecasted byempiricalmodeling based only on the rock glacier distribution and classification. Therefore, rock glacier classifications based only on remote sensing and geomorphological evidence as the main sources for extracting regional climate and paleoclimate signals should be treated with caution

APPARATO E METODO DI CLASSIFICAZIONE DI DATI A FORMA D'ONDA COMPLETA DA SEGNALI RETRORIFLESSI

Il metodo proposto mira a classificare i segnali retrodiffusi (ad esempio dati di forma d\u2019onda completa da LiDAR aerei), ossia consente di assegnare ad ogni punto rilevato la relativa classe, a seconda dell\u2019oggetto colpito dal segnale emesso dallo strumento (ad esempio terreno, edificio o vegetazione). Il metodo utilizza una procedura in due fasi, che permette di sfruttare sia il segnale grezzo, sia la posizione spaziale e le relazioni geometriche tra punti vicini, grazie all\u2019impiego di un classificatore e di un successivo algoritmo di segmentazione, ottenendo una classificazione accurata e completamente automatica. Attraverso il metodo brevettato, nella prima fase i dati della forma d\u2019onda grezza vengono forniti come input per un classificatore. Nella seconda fase della procedura, i dati sono mappati in un\u2019immagine bidimensionale, in cui ogni pixel memorizza il vettore di distribuzione di probabilit\ue0, fornito dal classificatore, e l\u2019altezza del dato che cade nel pixel. Quindi viene utilizzato un algoritmo di segmentazione per partizionare l\u2019immagine, assegnando un\u2019etichetta ad ogni pixel dell\u2019immagine, in modo che pixel con la stessa etichetta abbiano propriet\ue0 comuni. Per svolgere questo compito vengono utilizzati metodi di deep learning. Il metodo permette cos\uec di ottenere una classificazione automatica che rispetto alle attuali tecnologie in essere migliora l\u2019accuratezza raggiungibile e consente di individuare con precisione anche punti appartenenti a classi che descrivono oggetti con una superficie particolarmente ridotta (come ad esempio i cavi di un elettrodotto)

Recent increases in winter snowfall provide resilience to very small glaciers in the Julian Alps, Europe

Very small glaciers (<0.5 km2) account for more than 80% of the total number of glaciers and more than 15% of the total glacier area in the European Alps. This study seeks to better understand the impact of extreme snowfall events on the resilience of very small glaciers and ice patches in the southeastern European Alps, an area with the highest mean annual precipitation in the entire Alpine chain. Mean annual precipitation here is up to 3300 mm water equivalent, and the winter snow accumulation is approximately 6.80 m at 1800 m asl averaged over the period 1979–2018. As a consequence, very small glaciers and ice/firn patches are still present in this area at rather low altitudes (1830–2340 m). We performed repeated geodetic mass balance measurements on 14 ice bodies during the period 2006–2018 and the results show an increase greater than 10% increase in ice volume over this period. This is in accordance with several extreme winter snow accumulations in the 2000s, promoting a positive mass balance in the following years. The long-term evolution of these very small glaciers and ice bodies matches well with changes in mean temperature of the ablation season linked to variability of Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. Nevertheless, the recent behaviour of such residual ice masses in this area where orographic precipitation represents an important component of weather amplification is somehow different to most of the Alps. We analysed synoptic meteorological conditions leading to the exceptional snowy winters in the 2000s, which appear to be related to the influence and modification of atmospheric planetary waves and Arctic Amplification, with further positive feedbacks due to change in local sea surface temperature and its interactions with low level flows and the orography. Although further summer warming is expected in the next decades, we conclude that modification of storm tracks and more frequent occurrence of extreme snowfall events during winter are crucial in ensuring the resilience of small glacial remnants in maritime alpine sectors

Recent Increases in Winter Snowfall Provide Resilience to Very Small Glaciers in the Julian Alps, Europe

Very small glaciers (<0.5 km(2)) account for more than 80% of the total number of glaciers and more than 15% of the total glacier area in the European Alps. This study seeks to better understand the impact of extreme snowfall events on the resilience of very small glaciers and ice patches in the southeastern European Alps, an area with the highest mean annual precipitation in the entire Alpine chain. Mean annual precipitation here is up to 3300 mm water equivalent, and the winter snow accumulation is approximately 6.80 m at 1800 m asl averaged over the period 1979-2018. As a consequence, very small glaciers and ice/firn patches are still present in this area at rather low altitudes (1830-2340 m). We performed repeated geodetic mass balance measurements on 14 ice bodies during the period 2006-2018 and the results show an increase greater than 10% increase in ice volume over this period. This is in accordance with several extreme winter snow accumulations in the 2000s, promoting a positive mass balance in the following years. The long-term evolution of these very small glaciers and ice bodies matches well with changes in mean temperature of the ablation season linked to variability of Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. Nevertheless, the recent behaviour of such residual ice masses in this area where orographic precipitation represents an important component of weather amplification is somehow different to most of the Alps. We analysed synoptic meteorological conditions leading to the exceptional snowy winters in the 2000s, which appear to be related to the influence and modification of atmospheric planetary waves and Arctic Amplification, with further positive feedbacks due to change in local sea surface temperature and its interactions with low level flows and the orography. Although further summer warming is expected in the next decades, we conclude that modification of storm tracks and more frequent occurrence of extreme snowfall events during winter are crucial in ensuring the resilience of small glacial remnants in maritime alpine sectors

Assessing the long-term effectiveness of channel control works and supporting watershed management through sediment dynamics studies

In risk management of mountain basins, quite often, there is a lack of information on the efficiency of existing structures, the evolution of the ongoing process, and a priori in-depth study to analyse the sediment morphology dynamics and the interaction with existing channel control works. The growing capability of producing High-Resolution Topography data (HRT) greatly simplifies the analysis of geomorphological changes at multiple spatial and temporal scales and enables the development of innovative approaches to monitor sediment morphology dynamics and understand the interaction with channel control works. Indeed, thanks to multi-temporal HRT surveys (e.g., Airborne Laser Scanning - ALS), it is possible to derive accurate multi-temporal Digital Terrain Models (DTMs), and reliable DTMs of Difference (DoDs) useful to quantify the morphological changes also in catchment areas covered by vegetation. However, without a methodological and detailed workflow that considers the differences in terms of accuracy between old “legacy” data sets and recent surveys and the errors associated with the processes of co-registration, it would not have been possible to obtain accurate and valid multi-temporal DoD. The information provided by sediment morphology dynamics (i.e., exploiting multi-temporal DoDs at catchment and reach scale) coupled with a very simple, quick, and user-friendly efficiency index of channel control works, could help to support the development of watershed management strategies, assess afterward the effectiveness of existing structures, and foster a more complete decision-making chain. Therefore, this research aims to introduce a methodological approach based on integrating the sediment morphology dynamics data over large time spans in some mountain catchments with an updated state of efficiency of existing interventions. Various examples of the proposed methodology emphasized the usefulness of providing more complete information, than in the past, by exploiting field surveys and remote sensing data, in a context such as the risk management process where uncertainty and incomplete information on the ongoing phenomena prevails. The realized database could be a starting point for further analysis or provide numerical data for prediction models of the life-cycle of channel control works in risk management processes. Finally, the methodological workflow proposed could provide increasingly up-to-date information to constantly identify the areas most prone to hazards, support effective risk management decisions, improve intervention planning, find more appropriate solutions, or direct the maintenance works