Abstract
The ability to remotely sense bankfull elevations was of particular interest in this study because bankfull mapping depends on topographic indicators. The method proposed here and integrated in a GIS environment combines the hydraulic depth and the flow height for each cross section. The local maxima values indicate a sudden increase in flow width where water spills across the floodplain. Such an approach has been implemented as a GIS tool in the QGIS software, and provides a resulting polygonal map of the bankfull limits. The algorithm was applied on several fluvial reaches in Umbria (central Italy). The source code is available as open source. Preliminary results are presented in Section , comparing remotely sensed bankfull limits to those obtained from fields surveys and, more recently, by operator–expert interpretation of aerial orthophotos.
Highlights
IntroductionField surveys and monitoring programs are usually time-consuming and expensive
In fluvial geomorphology studies, field surveys and monitoring programs are usually time-consuming and expensive
We suggest to use a starting step value similar to the mean channel width and the extension of a cross section big enough to respect the criteria listed below
Summary
Field surveys and monitoring programs are usually time-consuming and expensive. The ability to remotely sense fluvial morphological features can significantly reduce effort with regards to time and money. Remote sensing using discrete return, near-infrared, airborne LiDAR Water penetrating lasers suitable for bathymetric survey, such as the experimental advanced airborne research LiDAR [1], have been developed for airborne platforms and are used to study channel and floodplain conditions and processes at length scales from several meters to tens of kilometers with a spatial resolution of about one meter [2]. The near-infrared airborne LiDAR have been used even in ecological fluvial fields [3], even coupled with multispectral Earth Observation images [4]
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