Identification of topographic elements composition based on landform boundaries from radar interferometry segmentation (preliminary study on digital landform mapping)

Dense vegetation that covers most landscapes in Indonesia becomes a common limitation in mapping the landforms in tropical region. This paper aims to examine the use of radar interferometry for landform mapping in tropical region; to examine the application of segmentation method to develop landform type boundaries; and to identify the topographic elements composition for each type of landform. Using Idrisi® and "eCognition ®" softwares, toposhape analysis, segmentation and multi-spectral classification were applied to identify the composition of topographic elements i.e. the types of land-cover from Landsat 8, elevation, slope, relief intensity and curvatures from SRTM (DEM). Visual interpretation on DEM and land-cover fusion imagery was conducted to derive basic control maps of landform and land-cover. The result shows that in segmentation method, shape and compactness levels are essential in obtaining land-cover, elevation, and slope class units to determine the most accurate class borders of each element. Despite a complex procedure applied in determining landform classification, the combination of topographic elements segmentation result presents a distinct border of each landform class. The comparison between landform maps derived from segmentation process and visual interpretation method demonstrates slight dissimilarities, meaning that multi-stage segmentation approach can improve and provide more effective digital landform mapping method in tropical region. Topographic elements on each type of landforms show distinctive composition key containing the percentage of each curvature elements per area unit. Supported by GIS programming and modeling in the future, this finding is significant in reducing effort in landform mapping using visual interpretation method for a very large coverage but in detail scale level.