Identification of Martian Polygonal Patterns Using the Dynamics of Watershed Contours

This paper presents a methodology to automatically identify polygonal patterns on the surface of Mars. These structures, which are typical of periglacial regions, result from climate oscillations and present a wide variation in size, shape and topology and occur in different types of terrains with rather different constituents and spectral reflectances. The proposed approach is mainly based on the analysis of the dynamics of watershed contours and is successfully applied to a set of different types of patterned terrains of Mars shown by MGS/MOC images.

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