Morphological comparison applied to environmental dynamics

Environmental monitoring is based on a survey of the territory and on the identification of the physical phenomenon to be studied. The features of the phenomenon are then described in order to develop comparisons among the sequential descriptions of the same scene. This process can be improved by using an automized contour analysis technique, that allows the quantitative evaluation of the morphological similarity. The paper presents such a new technique that can be integrated in a GIS technology as a tool to improve its potential in the description, comprehension and forecasting of environmental and territory dynamics. The procedure is characterized by the following peculiarities: * separate consideration of the geometrical, morphological and topological features of the contours selected to describe the phenomenon; * adoption of a mechanism that guides the comparison by exploiting already acquired theoretical or experimental knowledge of the phenomenon; * very high flexibility in the comparison between heterogeneous and nonsimultaneous representations of the same object, i.e. from aerial or satellite surveys, from in situ measurements, from simple maps and from numerical simulations. An application of the technique to a marine ecosystem and specifically to the study of the seasonal evolution of seagrass population in a shallow area of the Venice Lagoon is presented here as an example.