Robust boundary extraction of great lakes by blocking Active Contour Model using Chinese GF-3 SAR data: a case study of Danjiangkou reservoir, China

Abstract

Chinese Gaofen-3 (GF-3) satellite is a spaceborne multi-polarisation synthetic aperture radar (SAR) mission in C-band and it can be applied in the multiple fields. GF-3 can achieve accurate water boundary extraction based on its high-resolution SAR image products. This paper will study GF-3's capability to extract water boundary. Danjiangkou reservoir, the largest artificial freshwater lake in Asia and water source of Chinese South-to-North Water Diversion Project, is selected as the study region. A novel segmentation method is proposed which consists of two parts: the first part is rough segmentation to get the initial boundary; the second part is fine segmentation to get the final water boundary. Experimental results show that GF-3 has good performance in water boundary exaction by virtue of this novel method.

Keywords

• radar imaging
• remote sensing by radar
• lakes
• geophysical image processing
• image segmentation
• reservoirs
• synthetic aperture radar
• feature extraction
• water resources
• water quality
• hydrological techniques
• robust boundary extraction
• active contour model
• chinese gf-3 sar data
• multipolarisation synthetic aperture radar mission
• high-resolution sar image products
• water source
• south-to-north water diversion project
• initial boundary
• final water boundary
• danjiangkou reservoir
• chinese gaofen-3 satellite
• gf-3 satellite
• artificial freshwater lake
• water boundary extraction