I need to map out the elements in the river in detail (wood, stones, gravel benches, sedimentary fractions ...). In previous mapping, I used river photography combined with river sketches, which I then processed in ArcGis Pro to the final map. But this method only worked for a narrow stream (2-3 m) because the camera was able to take a stream across its entire width. Now I map a much larger stream (12m) and mapping by photo is much harder and inaccurate here.
How do you map streams and rivers? Which methods do you use for that? Do you have any proven tips?
Thanks for any answers.
Have a nice day.
You might look into the David Rosgen information, and much of his approach has been combined into the Rivermorph software. His approach is fairly common in use for stream assessment, restoration type work. Portions of Rosgen’s work are available on wildland hydrology website, and he prepared a chapter within the NRCS Engineering Handbook, Part 526 that is on the internet. Rosgen has an approach in mapping stream banks, collecting a variety of morphological information, assessing stability and bank stress, classifying stream type and substrates into classes, etc.
Montgomery and Buffington had an relative rapid approach at mapping aquatic various habitats including debris, substrates, location of facets, channel widths, depths, types, etc.
If the stream is relatively clear, and with supportive funding, green LiDAR would be helpful.
The problem is the scale of work
his idea is to map very small areas in both length and width.
one-. An aerial photo at a very large scale would be optimal.
two-. Other solutions to make polygons with GPS traking.
3-. With a drone they could make very detailed photographs that serve to work with stereo pairs in 3D.
You might consider using a drone to produce a high-res digital orthophoto, which would give detailed image, height and positional data.
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