Monica Palaseanu

and 2 more

The NASA Ames Stereo Pipeline (ASP) is an open source software of automated geodesy and photogrammetry tools to process satellite, aerial camera, and historical imagery with and without accurate camera pose information using a structure-from-motion (SfM) methodology. ASP is designed to generate topographic digital surface models (DSM). We added to the ASP topographic module a bathymetric module to derive near shore bathymetry using satellite panchromatic bands (PAN), and multispectral bands. The process is semiautomatic and can generate either topographic, bathymetric or topo-bathymetric (TB) seamless 3D point clouds and DSM in the same vertical and horizontal coordinate systems. The bathymetric results depend heavily on the water surface elevation and while previous methods considered the water surface horizontal, our bathymetric module takes into consideration the earth curvature for the considered satellite imagery. A land / water mask can be automatically derived using NIR bands or can be user defined. The new ASP bathymetry module was tested using WorldView-2 panchromatic and green band stereo imagery in Florida Keys (Key West) FL from May 2015. The nearshore PAN and GRN bathymetric results around Key West, FL were validated against bathymetric lidar collected in 2017. The validation errors improve with adding camera calibration and finally alignment to prior topographic lidar data (no bathymetry data used) from 1.0778 m root mean square error (RMSE) to 0.4052 m RMSE to 0.2480 m RMSE, respectively. For PAN bands the depth penetration around Key West was around 4 m with a TB DSM resolution of 1 m. For the same area, using the green (GRN) band the bathymetric validation RMSE in absence of camera adjustment or alignment was 1.1040 m, with camera adjustment RMSE improves to 0.6846 m, and with topographic alignment RMSE is 0.5854. For the green bands the depth penetration in Key West was approximately 7 m with a TB DSM resolution of 2 m.

Richard Becker

and 3 more

Along the east coast of Lake Michigan, shallow to intermediate depth landslides are influenced by lake water levels, bluff ground water saturation, and lithology. The bluffs are composed of unconsolidated glacial tills interbedded with / overlain by glaciodeltaic sand and lacustrine silt and clay. These bluffs are experiencing toe erosion due to lake level rise, surface erosion, creeping, and slumping due to water runoff and seepage. Lake Michigan water levels rose after 2013 following a below average period (~1999-2013), peaking at record levels in 2019-2020 before falling slightly in 2021. This rise accelerated bluff toe erosion, and longshore currents rapidly removed the sediment and redistributed it along the coast. Recent bluff failures have brought media attention due to real estate and roadway losses. Many property owners have chosen to armor the shoreline to prevent further erosion. This study is focused on 3 sites: (1). a 1.9 km stretch along Lakeshore Dr. in St. Joseph (SJo), MI; (2). a 2 km stretch of subdivisions centered on Miami Park (MP), MI; and {3). a 1 km stretch of natural vegetated area north of a water reservoir near Ludington (LU), MI. All sites have active groundwater seepage at clay layer contacts on the bluff faces. Nadir and obliques photos obtained in July 2019 and 2021 using Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) have shown that all sites experienced erosion, landslides, and bluff top retreat. SJo site has dense vegetation on the bluff face but recent failures have removed vegetation and sediment along the face slope. MP area experienced significant bluff retreat, despite toe armoring with large boulders along several sections. At a Nature Preserve (MP), the bluff top retreated as much as 5-10m, with loss of vegetation on the bluff face and multiple landslides. LU area had several landslides resulting in both vegetation and land surface loss. From 2019 to2021, the LU area experienced 177,000 ± 2300 m3 of erosion, which indicates a rate of erosion three times the erosion rate calculated for 2012-2019 (190,000 ± 14,000 m3). More than 5m of glaciodeltaic sand were lost during 2019-2021 around a water seep above lacustrine clay with marginal accumulation at the bluff toe, whereas during 2012-2019 toe erosion removed >10m underneath that location, with ~5m loss normal to the face.