Developing General Coastal Vegetation Maps for Coastal Morphodynamic Models Active
The USGS is collaborating with researchers from other agencies, academia, and industry to predict coastal impacts from hurricanes. The results from this study will better inform coastal morphological change models, which will lead to improved hurricane impact projections.
The Science Issue and Relevance: The U.S. Gulf and Atlantic coasts are increasingly threatened and impacted by large tropical storms that can have substantial impacts, including flooding, erosion, overwash, breaching, and destruction of infrastructure. The ability to forecast the impacts of these storms has improved, but there are still significant uncertainties in projected coastal impacts, often due to how land conditions are inadequately described in forecast models. The USGS is collaborating with researchers from numerous other agencies, academia, and industry on the National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP) National Hurricane Coastal Impacts (NHCI) project. Funded by NOPP, the NHCI project aims to predict coastal impacts from hurricanes. The results from this study will better inform coastal morphological change models, which will lead to improved hurricane impact projections. One aspect of this project will be to develop general coastal vegetation maps with characteristics relevant for coastal morphologic models, like roughness, along the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Seaboard (Fig. 1). This effort is part of a larger collaboration for the NHCI project focused on developing baseline conditions related to elevation, vegetation, sediment, and structures led by Dean Gesch from USGS’ Earth Resources Observation and Science Center (EROS).
Methodology for Addressing the Issue: The first step for this effort will be to develop and deploy mapping algorithm(s) for mapping vegetation, bare ground, and water areas from the most current 1-m U.S. National Agriculture Imagery Program orthoimagery on the Google Earth Engine platform. Next, these high-resolution vegetation maps will be linked to national land use land cover products, such as National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) most recent Coastal Change Assessment Products, to develop enhanced coastal vegetation type maps with classes relevant to coastal morphologic models (Fig. 2). Given the dynamic nature of vegetation due to change and disturbance along the coast, this effort will also include research and development at focal sites prone to storm activity, such as the western Deltaic Plain of Louisiana and the Outer Banks of North Carolina (Fig. 1). This research will include developing an application concept and prototype for developing a rapid response map attributed with vegetation characteristics, and exploring the utilization of height above ground datasets, tidal marsh biomass estimates, and synthetic aperture radar for enhancing gridded estimates of vegetation structure parameters.
Future Steps: Throughout the project USGS will collaborate closely with NHCI coastal modelers and other researchers, the primary users of these data. After completing the maps and analyses described above, this information will be shared with coastal managers and the overall scientific community through presentations, data releases, reports, and journal articles.
The USGS is collaborating with researchers from other agencies, academia, and industry to predict coastal impacts from hurricanes. The results from this study will better inform coastal morphological change models, which will lead to improved hurricane impact projections.
The Science Issue and Relevance: The U.S. Gulf and Atlantic coasts are increasingly threatened and impacted by large tropical storms that can have substantial impacts, including flooding, erosion, overwash, breaching, and destruction of infrastructure. The ability to forecast the impacts of these storms has improved, but there are still significant uncertainties in projected coastal impacts, often due to how land conditions are inadequately described in forecast models. The USGS is collaborating with researchers from numerous other agencies, academia, and industry on the National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP) National Hurricane Coastal Impacts (NHCI) project. Funded by NOPP, the NHCI project aims to predict coastal impacts from hurricanes. The results from this study will better inform coastal morphological change models, which will lead to improved hurricane impact projections. One aspect of this project will be to develop general coastal vegetation maps with characteristics relevant for coastal morphologic models, like roughness, along the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Seaboard (Fig. 1). This effort is part of a larger collaboration for the NHCI project focused on developing baseline conditions related to elevation, vegetation, sediment, and structures led by Dean Gesch from USGS’ Earth Resources Observation and Science Center (EROS).
Methodology for Addressing the Issue: The first step for this effort will be to develop and deploy mapping algorithm(s) for mapping vegetation, bare ground, and water areas from the most current 1-m U.S. National Agriculture Imagery Program orthoimagery on the Google Earth Engine platform. Next, these high-resolution vegetation maps will be linked to national land use land cover products, such as National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) most recent Coastal Change Assessment Products, to develop enhanced coastal vegetation type maps with classes relevant to coastal morphologic models (Fig. 2). Given the dynamic nature of vegetation due to change and disturbance along the coast, this effort will also include research and development at focal sites prone to storm activity, such as the western Deltaic Plain of Louisiana and the Outer Banks of North Carolina (Fig. 1). This research will include developing an application concept and prototype for developing a rapid response map attributed with vegetation characteristics, and exploring the utilization of height above ground datasets, tidal marsh biomass estimates, and synthetic aperture radar for enhancing gridded estimates of vegetation structure parameters.
Future Steps: Throughout the project USGS will collaborate closely with NHCI coastal modelers and other researchers, the primary users of these data. After completing the maps and analyses described above, this information will be shared with coastal managers and the overall scientific community through presentations, data releases, reports, and journal articles.