Alys Wall, Murray Darling Basin Authority OUTLINE: 1. Sustainable Rivers Audit Case Study 2. Full waveform LiDAR 3. Physical Form Variables 4. Examples 5. Vegetation Variables 6. Examples

1. Monitoring River Health in the Murray-Darling
Basin using Full Wave Form LiDAR
FUNGIS
30 May 2011
Alys Wall

2. Outline
1. Sustainable Rivers Audit Case
Study
2. Full waveform LiDAR
3. Physical Form Variables
4. Examples
5. Vegetation Variables
6. Examples

3. Sustainable Rivers Audit

4. Background
Sustainable Rivers Audit (SRA)
• Establish 1750 Reference Condition
• Assess five themes against reference condition
1. Fish
2. Macro Invertebrates
3. Hydrology
4. Physical Form (of River Channels)
5. Vegetation
• Ongoing monitoring of themes against land-use, water–use
vegetation cover, Climate

5. Methods
• Metrics = Observed/Expected
• Expected = Reference Condition value
Integration:
• to indicators, Theme Indices, Ecosystem health
• using Expert Rules
Current Data Reference Data
Metrics

6. Aggregation: from Site to Basin
• Zones for stratifying
sampling effort
• Samples at random sites or
census of reaches within
Zones
• Aggregation from
– Site to Zone; and
– Zone to Valley.

7. Full Wave Form LiDAR
• Entire backscattered signal
recorded
• Acquisition of a continuous
section
• Additional information on the
illuminated surface structure
(Chauve, 2007)

8. Data collection for new Themes
Derived layers and data include:
• 1 m surfaces
• 25 cm contour lines
• Vegetation height surfaces
• Bank and channel delineation
• Channel wetted area polygons
• Bank geometry and vegetation height
measurements
• Summarised to valley/zone reporting of
River Health (observed vs expected)

9. Project Scope
SITES
23 Valleys across 1M sq. km
X 70 sites per Valley = 1610 river sites
+ 31 control sites near airfields
+ 71 check sites
= Total 1710 surveyed sites
Primary DATA SETS
27 x base data sets for each site
Measurements
50 x Physical Form Channel
Measurements for each of 19 transects
per site.
17 x Vegetation Measurements per bank
area per vegetation polygon.
TOTAL
Over 2,000,000 measurements
Over: 200,000 files

10. Full Wave Form LiDAR
(TopoSys, 2007)

11. Full Wave Form LiDAR

12. Full Wave Form LiDAR

13. Vexcel Imagery
VNIR
RGB
Vexcel Survey Parameters
Altitude: 1,500m, 1 flight strip per site
Resolution: 30cm - no Pan Sharpening
Accuracy: 50cm

14. Physical Form Variables
Mean Channel Width
Channel Mean Depth
Channel Width Variability
Channel Sinuosity
Channel Meander Wavelength
Longitudinal Bank Variability

15. (Gippel, 2008)

17. 1. Map Channel Features
2. Generate 19 x transect profiles
3. Measure 50 x Channel attributes for each site / transect
Channel Width
Le
ft
B
an Channel Depth
e
k
gl
Convexity Left B. Le
An
ng x-sectional area
k
t
an
h
B
Left Bank Inflexions
ht
g
Ri
Bed width

21. LiDAR Vegetation Variable
Canopy Height

25. Vegetation

26. Pink = < 10 cm
Brown = 10 cm to 50 cm

27. Green = 50 cm to 1m

28. Orange = 1 to 3 m
Purple = > 3m

29. Wetted
River
surface

30. Wetted
River
surface

31. Summary:
SRA Report II due to be released mid 2011
Full extent of LiDAR metrics for geomorphology
and vegetation still to be investigated

32. Conclusion
Full waveform LiDAR
is extremely
information rich data
for environmental
assessment

33. Thank you

34. Vegetation