The human perception of geological lineaments and other discrete features in remote sensing imagery: Signal strengths, noise levels and quality

Manual extraction of bedrock lineaments from high-resolution LiDAR data: methodological bias and human perception

“…This notwithstanding, since the beginning of manual lineament mapping on aerial photographs, it has been shown that the mapping results can differ largely between different operators, questioning the reproducibility of manual lineament extraction (e.g., Burns et al 1967;Podwysocki et al 1975;Burns & Brown 1978;Huntington & Raiche 1978). Differences between operators are also obvious in a recent mapping study using a synthetic DEM of a drumlin field (Hillier et al 2014).…”

How do we see fractures? Quantifying subjective bias in fracture data collection

“…For example, previous work has investigated the operator, used here to describe the person undertaking the interpretation, variability in extracting lineament or landform data from remote sensing (e.g. Landsat imagery or aerial photographs) (Burns et al, 1976;Burns and Brown, 1978;Huntington and Raiche, 1978), digital elevation models (Hillier et al, 2015), and lidar datasets (Scheiber et al, 2015). Differences in operator interpretations can occur due to (a) technical factors in data acquisition, for example bandwidth for Landsat data, image quality for aerial photographs, or illumination direction for lidar, (b) the scale of observation, for example 1 : 20 000 compared to 1 : 5000, and (c) inter-operator differences (i.e.…”

“…Significant variability was observed in the number, trace length, and orientation of the reported lineaments. Burns et al (1976) attributes a difference of 8 % in interpretations to "human factors" for lineaments identified using aerial photography. While differences in inter-operator interpretation have been previously identified, the underlying human factors causing these differences remain unclear.…”

Geothermal resource assessment for the state of Texas: status of progress, November 1980. Final report

“…More recently, s i g n i f i c a n t contributions toward a concise, modern nomenclature have been made by Burns and others (1976), Burns and Brown (1978), and Huntington and Raiche (1978), although these authors failed t o provide a system o f terminology which was both i n t e r n a l l y consistent and broadly applicable. Similarly, "lineament" -has been used t o mean a perceptually d i s c r e t e l i n e a r f i g u r e i n some studies (for example, Burns and Brown, 1978), and an e n t i r e nearly para1 l e 1 ("subparallel") l i n e s i n others ( f o r population o f p a r a l l e l t o example, Brock, 1957a).…”