Data from: Modeling salt marsh vegetation height using Unoccupied Aircraft Systems and Structure from Motion

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  • Salt marshes provide important services to coastal ecosystems of the southeastern United States. In many locations, salt marsh habitats are threatened by coastal development and erosion, necessitating large-scale monitoring. Assessing vegetation height across the extent of a marsh can provide a comprehensive analysis of its health, as vegetation height is associated with above ground biomass (AGB), and can be used to track degradation or growth over time. Traditional methods to do this, however, rely on manual measurements of stem heights that can cause harm to the marsh ecosystem. Moreover, manual measurements are limited in scale and are often time and labor intensive. Unoccupied Aircraft Systems (UAS) can provide an alternative to manual measurements and generate continuous results across a large spatial extent in a short period of time. In this study, a multirotor UAS equipped with optical (RGB) and multispectral sensors was used to survey five salt marshes in Beaufort, North Carolina. Structure-from-Motion (SfM) photogrammetry of the resultant imagery allowed for continuous modeling of the entire marsh ecosystem in three-dimensional space. From these models, vegetation height was extracted and compared to ground-based manual measurements. Vegetation heights generated from UAS data consistently under-predicted true vegetation height proportionally and a transformation was developed to predict true vegetation height. Employing this transformation, our results indicate that UAS and SfM are capable of producing accurate assessments of salt marsh health via consistent and accurate vegetation height measurements. ... [Read More]

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34 files (6.95 GB)
Data Citation
  • DiGiacomo, A. E., Bird, C. N., Pan, V. G., Dobroski, K., Atkins-Davis, C., Johnston, D. W., Ridge, J. T. (2020). Data from: Modeling salt marsh vegetation height using Unoccupied Aircraft Systems and Structure from Motion. Duke Research Data Repository. https://doi.org/10.7924/r4w956k1q
DOI
  • 10.7924/r4w956k1q
Publication Date
ARK
  • ark:/87924/r4w956k1q
Collection Dates
  • May 2018-July 2019
Type
Format
Related Materials
  • DiGiacomo, A. E., Bird, C. N., Pan, V. G., Dobroski, K., Atkins-Davis, C., Johnston, D. W., & Ridge, J. T. (2020). Modeling Salt Marsh Vegetation Height Using Unoccupied Aircraft Systems and Structure from Motion. Remote Sensing, 12(14), 2333. MDPI AG.  https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12142333
Funding Agency
  • Duke University Bass Connections
  • North Carolina Coastal Recreational Fishing License Grants Program
Grant Number
  • Marine Resources Fund, Grant # 2017-H-068 (NC Coastal Recreational Fishing License Grants Program)
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Title
  • Data from: Modeling salt marsh vegetation height using Unoccupied Aircraft Systems and Structure from Motion
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file details README.md 2020-06-08 Public Download
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