Automatic linear disturbance footprint mapping in Alberta, Canada based on dense time-series Landsat imagery

Mapping linear disturbances from oil and gas extraction and mining in Western Canada traditionally relies on manual digitizing from very high resolution remote sensing data, which usually limits results to small operational area. In this paper, we present an approach of mapping linear disturbances based on time series data analysis of regularly acquired, and low cost satellite data of moderate resolution. This approach involves three steps: line detection based on a multi-scale directional template, line updating based on reappearance frequency and line connection using Hough Transform. This automatic method has been tested over three sites in Alberta, Canada by detecting linear disturbances occurring over the period of 1984-2013 using Landsat imagery. The results show that the method can extract very narrow linear features, including seismic lines, roads and pipelines with a good performance.