Identifying Riverine Sand and Gravel Deposits Using a High Resolution Day-Night Temperature Difference Map and Digitized Aerial Photography

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2004

Department

Geography and Geology

School

Biological, Environmental, and Earth Sciences

Abstract

Sand and gravel are important natural resources used in construction. Point bars in rivers often contain sand and gravel deposits that are identified through laborious and expensive field investigation. This research examined remote sensing‐assisted methods of discriminating between surficial sediment deposits of varying particle sizes (e.g. silt/clay, sand and gravel) based on a) the differences in their diurnal temperature properties, and b) daytime spectral reflectance. NASA's Airborne Terrestrial Applications Sensor (ATLAS) was used to obtain pre‐dawn and mid‐day 2.5 × 2.5 m spatial resolution data in the visible, near‐infrared, mid‐infrared, and thermal‐infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Natural color aerial photography were also collected. The pre‐dawn and mid‐day thermal infrared data were regressed with in situ temperature measurements to produce pre‐dawn and mid‐day temperature maps. These data were differenced to produce a day‐night temperature difference map. The temperature difference image was useful for discriminating between sand and gravel but not between different classes of gravel. Three bands of pre‐dawn thermal infrared data and the digitized aerial photography were classified independently. The classification of surface materials based on the pre‐dawn thermal infrared data was superior to the classification derived from the aerial photography based on Kappa analysis.

Publication Title

Geocarto International

Volume

19

Issue

2

First Page

49

Last Page

56

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