River morphological changes detection from drone and radar satellite data

The identification and quantification of morphological changes occurring in the river channel over time are essential to understand rivers behaviour, assess sediment budgets, evaluate effectiveness of river management strategies and support the production of natural risk map. Recently, river science has made a breakthrough thanks to emerging remote sensing technologies and today we can rely on an unparalleled amount of data, at spatial and temporal resolution not available in the past. This has opened new perspectives for river monitoring and fluvial survey practices, allowing to cover areas up to the catchment scale and get information almost in continuum. This research aims to investigate the potential of radar satellite data collected from Sentinel 1 mission to infer information about rivers morphodynamics processes (such as erosion and deposition), that may occur on medium-large river (e.g., active channel width > 50 m) after a flood that caused significant morphological adjustments. Drone and satellite data were collected in September 2017 and September 2018 on a selected site along the Po river, in northern Italy, characterized by a large exposed sediment bar. In March 2018 a flood caused an avulsion and a new secondary channel was opened. We used the sequential drone acquisitions to generate a Dem of Difference, that revealed geomorphic changes of the monitored sediment bar up to 2 m erosion and 1.5 m deposition. We then exploited the radar data of Sentinel 1 and conducted a seasonal analysis using both the coherence data between image pairs and the backscattered radar signal, by investigating the variability of the radar signals through the year and the correspondent condition of the bar. Results show that there is a significant correlation between morphological changes occurred in the site and the associated values of both the amplitude and the coherence of the radar data pre and post the event that caused the morphological changes measured. Further studies are needed to better discriminate the different contributions to changes in amplitude and coherence driven by soil water content, vegetation, sediment size, atmospheric condition for the various time windows analysed. Despite that, these initial evidences are encouraging and new applications to other sites and flood events are planned because these results prove the sensitiveness of the radar signal to geomorphic events. Even simply the ability to detect where channel morphological processes are occurring and their expected intensity through Sentinel 1 data would allow to prioritize more detailed field campaigns by, for instance, UAV technology providing a notable advance compared to the current ability to monitor river morphological changes on large scale.