Program Identification Method and Application of Barchan Dune

It is of great significance to study the morphology and movement mechanism of aeolian sand. This paper presents a recognition method of the barchan dune. The edge contour curve and feature points of the dune are extracted from the dune image based on the image process. The contour curve of the dune and its corresponding standard crescent-shaped curve is expanded in the polar coordinate system. According to the correlation analysis result of the two expanded curves, it can be determined whether the dune is a barchan dune. MATLAB codes are programmed to process the method. The method is used in subaqueous dune experiments and satellite pictures of the dune group. The shape of the dune is extracted and recognized successfully. Moreover, the structural stability of the barchan dune is discussed preliminarily based on the result of the subaqueous dune experiment. All the work shows that this method is much useful to the study of structural stability and evolution features of the moving barchan dune.