High Spatial Resolution Digital Imagery
3
site. Corps personnel initially identified nearby estuarine wetlands as reference
sites to aid in the design and installation of proposed constructed wetlands on
Poplar Island. A preliminary cooperative effort between the Baltimore District
and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) was underway to characterize
the reference wetlands when TEC proposed the incorporation of high-resolution
airborne multispectral imagery.
1.2
Enhanced Levee Inspections
The Corps of Engineers is responsible for the construction and maintenance
of thousands of miles of levees throughout the continental United States. The
Rock Island District maintains more than 546 combined miles of levees and con-
crete flood walls along the Mississippi and Illinois rivers and their tributaries.
Periodic inspections of these flood control structures are mandatory. The District
has recently developed and implemented an ArcView GIS application to assist
with levee inspections.
The objective of this applied research effort was to evaluate the cost effec-
tiveness of utilizing high spatial resolution airborne digital multispectral imagery
to enhance levee inspection procedures. Cost effectiveness was evaluated based
on total cost to acquire and post-process the airborne images, and the benefit that
the mosaics provided to the levee inspection procedures as enhanced background
layers in the ArcView application.
1.3
Invasive Species Mapping at Lake Okeechobee, Florida
Western Lake Okeechobee supports a complex system of freshwater wetland
and aquatic plant communities. Invasive and undesirable plant species are a sig-
nificant problem throughout Southern Florida, especially within the diverse
communities that characterize Lake Okeechobee. Examples of invasive exotics
include Hydrilla verticillata, water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes), water lettuce
(Pistia stratiotes), and Brazilian pepper (Schinus terebinthifolius). Invasive spe-
cies management practices require the initial step of delineating the areal extents
of plant populations.
The objective of this applied research effort was to employ high spatial
resolution digital airborne and satellite-borne multispectral imagery to identify
and delineate various exotic and native plant communities within selected study
sites over western Lake Okeechobee.
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