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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ISPRS-Annals</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ISPRS-Annals</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">ISPRS Ann. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">2194-9050</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/isprs-annals-XI-3-2026-687-2026</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Self-Modulation Aggregation within Dense Skip Connections for Mapping of Retrogressive Thaw Slumps</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Yuan</surname>
<given-names>Yi</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0009-0006-9481-4938</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zhou</surname>
<given-names>Guiyun</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zheng</surname>
<given-names>Zhishuai</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Chang</surname>
<given-names>Minghui</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Maldonado</surname>
<given-names>Andrea</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>He</surname>
<given-names>Binbin</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Werner</surname>
<given-names>Martin</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>School of Resources and Environment, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Big Geospatial Data Management, Technical University of Munich, Germany</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>08</day>
<month>07</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>XI-3-2026</volume>
<fpage>687</fpage>
<lpage>693</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Yi Yuan et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-3-2026/687/2026/isprs-annals-XI-3-2026-687-2026.html">This article is available from https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-3-2026/687/2026/isprs-annals-XI-3-2026-687-2026.html</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-3-2026/687/2026/isprs-annals-XI-3-2026-687-2026.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-3-2026/687/2026/isprs-annals-XI-3-2026-687-2026.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Accurate mapping of retrogressive thaw slumps (RTSs) in permafrost regions remains challenging due to their irregular morphology, blurred boundaries, and strong spatial correlation. This paper proposes a lightweight multi-level self-modulation (MLSM) module embedded into the UNet++ backbone to enhance non-local feature modeling for high-resolution image segmentation. The overall framework is built upon a UNet++ backbone with dense skip connections, where the proposed MLSM module adaptively fuses multi-scale contextual information to enhance feature coherence across spatially correlated regions. By incorporating a low-rank regularization term, MLSM dynamically modulates feature responses according to structural variations, allowing attention to adapt to spatially complex RTS regions. The integration of depth-wise convolution and channel recalibration further refines feature aggregation efficiency. Experimental evaluations on the Maxar dataset demonstrate that the proposed method achieves superior segmentation accuracy and smoother boundary delineation compared with existing models. The proposed framework provides a lightweight, robust, and computationally efficient solution for delineating irregular and morphologically complex RTSs.</p>
</abstract>
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