A FRACTAL ANALYSIS OF SHADOWED AND SUNLIT AREAS

Analyses of remote-sensing imagery from a fractal perspective have bec ome more frequent in the literature. However, one aspect which has not been considered specifically is how images integrate a mix of several , possibly very different, fractal processes. In this exploratory inve stigation, the fractal dimensions of sunlit and shadowed areas of surf aces of known fractal dimensions were determined. It was found that th e shadowed areas tend to have fractal dimensions approaching 2.0, wher eas, surprisingly, sunlit areas have fractal dimensions which are inve rsely related to the fractal dimension of the surface