Orthoimagery, digital elevation, digital terrain, final surface, and vegetation classification models for four stream catchments in western Colorado 2016

Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) flights were conducted over four stream catchments in Rio Blanco County, Colorado, during the summer of 2016. Two sties had active oil and gas operations within the basin whereas the other two sites did not. Structure from motion (SfM) was used to align raw images and create a dense point cloud, georectified orthoimage, and Digital Elevation Model (DEM) for each basin. A Digital Terrain Model (DTM), or bare earth model, for each basin was created by reclassifying the dense point cloud as either bare ground or other (vegetation, oil and gas infrastructure, etc.) and interpolating the land surface between bare ground points. Ideally, the DTM would always be equal or lower than the DEM; however, the interpolated surface can sometimes be higher than the DEM if bare ground points surround depressions with vegetation or in thick vegetation strands with an undulating surface. Therefore, a final surface model, created by merging the DTM with the DEM for all areas where the DTM was greater than the DEM, was produced for each basin. Lastly, a random forest classification approach was used to classify the orthoimagery on a pixel level into five vegetation/land cover classifications - bare ground, grass, litter, shrub/woody vegetation, and shadow.