The vulnerability of coastal systems to hazards such as storms and sea-level rise is typically characterized using a combination of ground and manned airborne systems that have limited spatial or temporal scales. Structure-from-motion (SfM) photogrammetry applied to imagery acquired by unmanned aerial systems (UAS) offers a rapid and inexpensive means to produce high-resolution topographic and visual reflectance datasets that rival existing lidar and imagery standards. Here, we use SfM to produce an elevation point cloud, an orthomosaic, and a digital elevation model (DEM) from data collected by UAS at a beach and wetland site in Massachusetts, USA. We apply existing methods to (a) determine the position of shorelines and foredunes using a feature extraction routine developed for lidar point clouds and (b) map land cover from the rasterized surfaces using a supervised classification routine. In both analyses, we experimentally vary the input datasets to understand the benefits and limitations of UAS-SfM for coastal vulnerability assessment. We find that (a) geomorphic features are extracted from the SfM point cloud with near-continuous coverage and sub-meter precision, better than was possible from a recent lidar dataset covering the same area; and (b) land cover classification is greatly improved by including topographic data with visual reflectance, but changes to resolution (when <50 cm) have little influence on the classification accuracy.
Citation Information
Publication Year | 2017 |
---|---|
Title | UAS-SfM for coastal research: Geomorphic feature extraction and land cover classification from high-resolution elevation and optical imagery |
DOI | 10.3390/rs9101020 |
Authors | Emily J. Sturdivant, Erika Lentz, E. Robert Thieler, Amy S. Farris, Kathryn M. Weber, David P. Remsen, Simon Miner, Rachel E. Henderson |
Publication Type | Article |
Publication Subtype | Journal Article |
Series Title | Remote Sensing |
Index ID | 70191276 |
Record Source | USGS Publications Warehouse |
USGS Organization | Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center |
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Erika Lentz, PhD
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Erika Lentz, PhD
Research GeologistEmailPhoneRob Thieler, PhD
Center DirectorEmailPhoneAmy S Farris
OceanographerEmailPhone