A Photogrammetric Approach to Measuring Temporal Change in Tree Kill Areas at Mammoth Mountain and Long Valley Caldera, California

Abstract:

A zone of dead trees and bare ground near Horseshoe Lake on the southeast flank of Mammoth Mountain in California is attributed to high emissions of volcanic CO₂ and has been characterized and studied since the 1990s. Measurements of diffuse CO₂ emissions have been made since 1994, but tree kills occurred following a large earthquake swarm in 1989 and before these first measurements. In order to track vegetation changes over time, fifteen aerial images of the Horseshoe Lake tree kill from 1951 to 2014 were analyzed using photogrammetric techniques which allow us to quantify the extent of bare ground and provide an indirect analysis of tree mortality, possibly related to CO₂ emissions.

The aerial images were assigned a uniform spatial reference, then image pixels were classified into two main categories, trees or bare ground, and the aerial extent quantified using the GIS software ArcMap. Between 1951 and 1987, there was little change in area of bare ground or tree density near Horseshoe Lake. The tree kill area appeared in 1992 and expanded rapidly to about 0.20 km² by 1998, which is similar to its present extent. In images from 2012 and onward, a large increase in bare ground was identified and correlated with a powerful windstorm that occurred in 2011. Overlaying CO₂ flux maps on the GIS classified images shows that the area of diffuse emission generally correlates with the tree kill area.

This method was applied to imagery of thermal tree kill areas within Long Valley Caldera as well. Tree kill near Shady Rest Park in Mammoth Lakes expanded incrementally to the east, southeast and west between 1993 and 2014 to its present extent of about 0.053 km², but this area also includes significant tree thinning by the city. In Basalt Canyon, southeast of Shady Rest, tree kill area has slowly expanded since 1995 to its present extent of about 0.041 km².