Articles | Volume 10, issue 6
https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-10-1211-2022
https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-10-1211-2022
Research article
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02 Dec 2022
Research article | Highlight paper |  | 02 Dec 2022

Size, shape and orientation matter: fast and semi-automatic measurement of grain geometries from 3D point clouds

Philippe Steer, Laure Guerit, Dimitri Lague, Alain Crave, and Aurélie Gourdon

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Interactive discussion

Status: closed

Comment types: AC – author | RC – referee | CC – community | EC – editor | CEC – chief editor | : Report abuse
  • RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2022-75', Benjamin Purinton, 15 Apr 2022
  • RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2022-75', Anonymous Referee #2, 10 May 2022
  • EC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2022-75', Rebecca Hodge, 19 May 2022
  • AC1: 'Response to comments on egusphere-2022-75', Philippe Steer, 21 Sep 2022

Peer review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision | EF: Editorial file upload
AR by Philippe Steer on behalf of the Authors (21 Sep 2022)  Author's response   Author's tracked changes   Manuscript 
ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (03 Oct 2022) by Rebecca Hodge
RR by Benjamin Purinton (12 Oct 2022)
RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (21 Oct 2022)
ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (24 Oct 2022) by Rebecca Hodge
AR by Philippe Steer on behalf of the Authors (27 Oct 2022)  Author's response   Author's tracked changes   Manuscript 
ED: Publish as is (01 Nov 2022) by Rebecca Hodge
ED: Publish as is (08 Nov 2022) by Tom Coulthard (Editor)
AR by Philippe Steer on behalf of the Authors (09 Nov 2022)  Manuscript 
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Editor
Understanding how sediment moves in rivers is fundamental to the shape of our landscapes and how they evolve. A key part of this understanding is measuring the size and shape of cobbles, pebbles and grains in the bed of a river. Often this measuring task is laborious and carried out by hand. However, this paper presents code and describes a method for measuring this using 3d point cloud data (from a laser scan for example) enabling the automation and rapid measurement.
Short summary
The morphology and size of sediments influence erosion efficiency, sediment transport and the quality of aquatic ecosystem. In turn, the spatial evolution of sediment size provides information on the past dynamics of erosion and sediment transport. We have developed a new software which semi-automatically identifies and measures sediments based on 3D point clouds. This software is fast and efficient, offering a new avenue to measure the geometrical properties of large numbers of sediment grains.