Upper Mississippi River Restoration Program Long Term Resource Monitoring

Feasibility of Using UMRR Land Cover Data to Map Delta Formations in Backwaters of the Upper Mississippi River

Rogala, J. T. and J. L. Hanson. 2018. Feasibility of Using UMRR Land Cover Data to Map Delta Formations in Backwaters of the Upper Mississippi River.  A completion report submitted to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Upper Mississippi River Restoration Program from the U.S. Geological Survey, LTRM- 2017SED3. 30 pp.

Abstract

The pilot study reported here examined the feasibility of using the UMRR LCU datasets to detect a specific planform change: delta formation in backwaters. This landform change is described by Lewin et al. (2017) as “Crevasses with deltas” and is where connections with channels deliver coarse sediments that are deposited in low-flow backwaters. A geospatial algorithm that addressed errors associated with the derivation of LCU datasets was used to detect potential delta formations, and results were evaluated for robustness.

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