Use of Point Clouds for River Corridor Analysis, Management, and Design

Abstract:

River scientists, managers, and engineers are increasingly working with 1-m scale point clouds of the Earth’s surface collected using many different technologies. Although point clouds have tremendous potential, they are fraught with errors and challenges, which has led to an abundance of methodological studies about data quality and coping with uncertainty. In addition, the abundance and spatial autocorrelation of the data necessitate a paradigm shift in scientific analysis away from classic statistical analysis focusing on central tendency and towards an understanding of the primary importance of spatially organized landscape complexity. Looking beyond data processing methods, there are terrific opportunities for linking scientific data analysis of existing conditions with engineering data synthesis to build new landscapes or enhance existing ones to achieve more environmental functionality. In pursuit of these goals the new paradigm of near-census river science is emerging to support mutual analysis and synthesis of point clouds of river corridors focusing on the 1-m scale as the basic building block for characterizing geomorphic processes and ecological functions. Examples of near-census analysis of riverine topography and biota will be presented. A demonstration will be shown using a new software platform to illustrate how key metrics extracted from point clouds can be used to design synthetic river corridors with multiple scales of organized landscape complexity that yield specific geomorphic processes and ecological functions.