Günther Prasicek
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Phone: +43 - (0)662 - 8044 - 5227
Fax: +43 - (0)662 - 8044 - 182
Günther Prasicek was born in 1979 in Vienna / Austria. He studied Geography with an emphasis on high mountain geomorphology at the Department of Geography and Regional Studies at the University of Vienna. Work on his diploma thesis included field investigations carried out over several months in the forefield of the Pasterze Glacier, Hohe Tauern, Austria, in order to estimate sediment storage and transfer rates in context with a proglacial sandur. The methods used include geomorphological mapping, field geophysics and GIS modeling. From 2007 to 2011 he worked as a staff member and project manager at “Alpinfra Consulting & Engineering GmbH” focusing on natural hazard management. Since 2010/2011 he is a PhD student within the GIScience Doctoral College. His thesis topic is “Visualization of landforms and geomorphic process domains using regional data sets - creating a digital geomorphological map of the European Alps”. Therefore he mainly focuses on digital terrain modeling, general and specific geomorphometry of landforms, the effect of scale on geomorphometric landform characteristics and object based image analysis (OBIA).
PhD Thesis Topic (working title): Analysis of landforms and geomorphic process domains using regional data sets - creating a digital geomorphological map of the European Alps Abstract: Within geomorphological process domains landscape evolution is governed by one or a collection of Earth surface processes. In manual geomorphological mapping process domains are identified by aggregation of landforms related to certain types of processes. This approach has recently been adapted for semi-automated mapping of geomorphological process domains using object based image analysis and digital terrain data. The methodology is suitable as long as data resolution allows the identification of single landforms. This is not the case for low resolution data like for example SRTM or GDEM data. However, they are available at no cost and covering nearly the whole land surface of the earth enabling the analysis of large areas. We aim for a methodology to delineate semi-automatically geomorphological process domains without incorporating single landforms. The workflow is designed to deal with large scales – with low resolution data of large extents. A digital elevation model (DEM) and its derivatives are used as basic input data. Semantics for geomorphological process domains are developed and geomorphometrical characteristics are defined. Domain-specific landform characteristics allow image segments to be classified and combined in order to derive process domains. Some important challenges need to be considered related to the fact that landforms can be the result of both recent and past processes. We assume that the used low resolution terrain data represents to a great extent the imprint of long-term process activity. The delineation of recent process domains using this kind of data will probably be limited to certain process types. In order to overcome this problem other process related information such as meteorological data or the location of recent glaciers could be incorporated in the classification. Results will include an assessment of the distribution of geomorphological processes and process domains in the European Alps to gain quantitative information about the influence of factors like glaciation and lithology on the geometry of the land surface.
Publications:
Research Areas: My research interests are mainly focused on geomorphometrical analysis of digital terrain models to explore the characteristics and the evolution of mountain topography, especially looking at geomorphological process domains.
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