Abstract
A procedure for the characterization of the temporal evolution of river morphology is presented. Wet and active river channels are obtained from the processing of imagery datasets. Information about channel widths and active channel surface subdivision in water, vegetation and gravel coverage classes are evaluated along with channel centerline lengths and sinuosity indices. The analysis is carried out on a series of optical remotely-sensed imagery acquired by different satellite missions during the time period between 1968 and 2017. Data from the CORONA, LANDSAT and Sentinel-2 missions were considered. Besides satellite imagery, a digital elevation model and aerial ortho-photos were also used. The procedure was applied to three, highly dynamic, Albanian rivers: Shkumbin, Seman and Vjosë, showing a high potential for application in contexts with limitations in ground data availability. The results of the procedure were assessed against reference data produced by means of expert interpretation of a reference set of river reaches. The results differ from reference values by just a few percentage points (<6%). The time evolution of hydromorphological parameters is well characterized, and the results support the design of future studies aimed at the understanding of the relations between climatic and anthropogenic controls and the response of river morphological trajectories. Moreover, the high spatial and temporal resolution of the Sentinel-2 mission motivates the development of an automatic monitoring system based on a rolling application of the defined procedure.
Highlights
Remote sensing provides valuable information about geographic spaces, allowing the detection of both naturally-occurring and anthropogenically-generated changes over wider areas than those commonly studied using data provided by field work
A wide range of river science topics and management applications has benefited from the use of satellite data, including river restoration [4,5,6,7], aquatic habitats characterization [8,9,10,11,12], understanding biodiversity and ecosystem functioning of riverine environments [12,13,14,15], hazard mapping and river management at the catchment scale [16,17,18], as well as mapping of morphological changes [19,20,21]
Though published studies of Albanian rivers date back more than 40 years [29,30,31,32], relatively little information is available on their recent hydromorphological dynamics
Summary
Remote sensing provides valuable information about geographic spaces, allowing the detection of both naturally-occurring and anthropogenically-generated changes over wider areas than those commonly studied using data provided by field work. The lack of an accurate, automatic, open source procedure able to detect and classify river features represents a limit in our present possibility to (i) exploit the variety of remotely-sensed data acquired by different sources and (ii) to merge them and reconstruct the evolutionary trajectory of river reaches. GRASS is a free and open source Geographic Information System (GIS) for geospatial data management and analysis, image processing, graphics’ and maps’ production, spatial modeling and visualization. It is a founding member of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo). Albania represents a paradigmatic case for many emerging contexts where hydromorphological data availability is often limited and where the methodology presented in this work has a high potential for enhancing quantitative knowledge of river forms and processes
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