Delineating Beach and Dune Morphology from Massive Terrestrial Laser-Scanning Data Using Generic Mapping Tools
Publication: Journal of Surveying Engineering
Volume 143, Issue 4
Abstract
Terrestrial laser-scanning (TLS) techniques have been proven to be efficient tools for collecting three-dimensional high-density and high-accuracy point clouds for coastal research and resource management. However, TLS collects a massive number of surveying points. The processing and presenting of the large volumes of data sets is always a challenge for research when targeting a large area with high resolution. This article introduces a practical workflow using shell-scripting techniques to chain together tools from the Generic Mapping Tools (GMT), Geographic Resources Analysis Support System (GRASS), and other command-based open-source utilities for automating TLS data processing. TLS point clouds acquired in the beach and dune area near Freeport, Texas, in May 2015 were used for the case study. GMT is an open-source collection of programs designed for manipulating and displaying geographic data sets. Shell scripts for rotating the coordinate system, removing anomalous points, assessing data quality, generating high-accuracy bare-earth digital elevation models (DEMs), and quantifying changes of beach and sand dune features (shoreline, cross-shore section, dune ridge, toe, and volume) are presented in this article. This investigation indicated that GMT provides efficient and robust programs for regridding and filtering massive TLS point-cloud data sets, generating and displaying high-resolution DEMs, and, finally, producing publication-quality maps and graphs. The methods and scripts presented in this article will benefit a large research and application community of geomorphologists, geologists, geophysicists, engineers, and others who need to handle large volumes of topographic data sets and generate high-resolution DEMs.
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Acknowledgments
This study was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) (Awards EAR-1242383, DUE-1243582, and OIA-1460034). The authors appreciate Dr. Paul Wessel and his team for providing the GMT package freely to the academic community. The authors thank UNAVCO field engineer Marianne Okal and University of Houston students Jiangbo Yu, Xinxiang Zhu, Hanlin Liu, Linqiang Yang, Yi-An Lin, Kavindu Jayanetti, and Vasilios Tsibanos for their assistance during field surveys. Students from the University of Houston Geophysics Summer Camp (2015) participated in the TLS survey. The authors acknowledge their outstanding contributions.
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Journal of Surveying Engineering
Volume 143 • Issue 4 • November 2017
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© 2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Feb 29, 2016
Accepted: Dec 29, 2016
Published online: May 2, 2017
Discussion open until: Oct 2, 2017
Published in print: Nov 1, 2017
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