Ensores aerotransportados y sistema de información geográfica para el establecimiento del límite de vegetación permanente en los litorales colombianos

Abstract

The determination of the permanent vegetation limit on the upper beach area was under taken with data provided by the LIDAR sensor (Light Detection And Ranging), together with digital metric aerial photographs of the La Boquilla North sector, Department of Bolivar, taken during December 2005. The objective of this research was to establish and to apply a methodology for the establishment of the permanent vegetation limit, as fundamental element for determining the beach limit toward the continent in the Colombian coasts, according to Decree 2324, in connection with the delimitation of the jurisdiction of National Maritime Authority DIMAR-and the conceptual model for determining the jurisdiction adopted by the above mentioned institution. The relevance of the investigation was focused on the use of the available spatial information from airborne sensors together with a Geographic Information System-ArcGIS 9.0, for the generation of permanent vegetation maps in extensive areas of the Colombian Caribbean coast, as an element that contributes to the technical determination of National Maritime Authority limit and to the control and administration of national coast areas. The work methodology involved the filtering and classification of the raw data provided by the LIDAR sensor, as basis for the establishment of height strata vegetation in the study area; the use of metric aerial photographs of the same sector as orientation, definition and geo reference elements; vegetation profile definition; adoption as reference, of the distribution of vegetable species in the beaches for tropical regions out lined by UNESCO in 1997 and finally, the use of the facilities of spatial analysis of ArcGIS 9.0 for the classification and mapping of permanent vegetation. The application of the proposed methodology allowed the reduction of time and costs of field surveying and digital processing data, since the amount of LIDAR supplied data, against other conventional methods to obtain spatial information about of vegetation structure, are much higher and are taken much more quick, in addition to providing higher work facility. Also, it was possible to establish that for the north region of the study area, the vegetation of the place is about permanent approximately 20m from the coastline toward the continent.