Abstract

River Bathymetry Toolkit (RBT) - Characterizing instream and floodplain geomorphology
Track: Forestry and Wildlife Management
Authors: Philip Bailey

Traditional techniques for understanding aquatic habitat in streams have focused on manual measurement. Such techniques are labor intensive to perform over the spatial and temporal scales utilized by aquatic species. Water-penetrating LiDAR imagery introduces the ability to describe the same aquatic habitats, using automated techniques, continuously over long river channel sections.
ESSA has collaborated with the US Forest Service to develop a suite of ArcGIS Desktop tools with the goal of characterizing instream and floodplain geomorphology. We present the current tools, including the automated layout of cross sections, centerlines, pools, Thalwegs and bankfull elevations. We also describe detrending DEMs to remove overall river valley slope and how this is useful for rapid identification of flooding events and assessing off-channel habitat.
The tools are licensed for free and have over two hundred users worldwide. Development is ongoing and in 2011 we will introduce new habitat metrics for intensively surveyed DEMs.