THREE-DIMENSIONAL (3D) GIS-BASED TOPOGRAPHICALLY MORPHOLOGICAL 
ANALYSIS AND DYNAMICAL VISUALIZATION OF ASSATEAGUE ISLAND 
NATIONAL SEASHORE 
Ming Xie® and Guoging Zhou" 
“Laboratory for Remote Sensing and Environmental Analysis (LARSEA), Department of Political Science & Geography, Old 
Dominion University, USA - mingxief@yahoo.com 
"Old Dominion University, Kaufman Hall, Rm. 214, Norfolk, VA 23529, USA - gzhou@odu.edu 
ISPRS Commission VII , WG VII/4 
KEY WORDS: Three-dimensional, DEM/DTM, LIDAR, GIS, Coast, Sea, Visualization 
ABSTRACT: 
The dynamic and complex nature of shorelines and beach topographic morphology present numerous challenges to geospatial 
analysis. Displaying and visualizing changes in these environments requires integration of knowledge on spatial data 
characterization as well as scientific understanding of the underlying coastal processes. This paper presents a method to visualize and 
analyze topography and topographic changes on Assantage Island Nation Seashore (AINS), which is located along a 37-mile stretch 
of Assateague Island National Seashore in Eastern Shore, VA. The DEMS data sets from the NASA ATM LIDAR data acquired 
from 1996 through 2000 for various time intervals, e.g., year-to-year, season-to-season, date-to-date, and a four year (1996-2000), 
have been created. The spatial patterns and volumetric amounts of erosion and deposition of each part on a cell-by-cell basis were 
calculated. A 3D dynamic display system using ArcView Avenue for visualizing dynamic coastal landforms has been developed. 
The system was designed into five functional modules: Dynamic Display, Analysis, Chart analysis, Output, and Help. The Display 
module includes five types of displays: Shoreline display, Shore Topographic Profile, Shore Erosion Display, Surface TIN Display, 
and 3D Scene Display. Visualized data include rectified and co-registered multispectral Landsat digital image and NOAA/NASA 
ATM LIDAR data. The system is demonstrated using multitemporal digital satellite and LIDAR data for displaying changes on the 
Assateague Island National Seashore, Virginia. The analyzed results demonstrated that a further understanding to the study and 
comparison of the complex morphological changes that occur naturally or human-induced on barrier islands is required. 
This paper presents our investigation into morphological 
changes of Assateague Island using DEMs derived from NOAA 
LIDAR data sets. The DEMs were resampled toa 1.5 by 1.5m 
resolution for analysis of spatial patterns of deposition and 
|. INTRODUCTION 
Traditional surveying of beaches, using widely-spaced transects 
and profiles, or interpreting aerial photography for morphologic 
  
change analysis of barrier islands, is time-consuming and labor- 
intensive (White et al. 2003). In recent years, airborne LIDAR 
has been widely employed in coastal mapping for sediment 
transport computation, creation of nautical charts (Irish and 
Lillycrop 1999), monitoring beach nourishment and evolution 
(Irish and white, 1998), coastline erosion and coastal structures 
change detection, near-shore and upland topography analysis 
(Williams and Dodd 1997), natural morphologie changes and 
response to man-made alterations (Guenther 1995), and 
emergency response to hurricanes, and ship groundings (Parson 
et al. 1997). Woolard et al. (2002) investigated the effect of 
using LIDAR data acquired in 1996 and 1997 to derive DEMs 
with different spatial resolutions to represent the topography of 
sand dunes, accurately depicting dune changes over this period 
with 5 by 5 meter DEMs. Meredith et al. (1999) evaluated 
hurricane-induced beach erosion between 1997 and- 1998 along 
the entire North Carolina coastline (approximately 500 km) 
using DEMs derived from LIDAR data at a resolution of about 
5 by 5 m. More recently, White et al. (2003) utilized LIDAR 
DEM to analyze morphologic change along the North Carolina 
coastline. A number of other researchers also have used LIDAR 
data for similar applications, such as Hofton et al. (2000) for 
valley analysis, Krabill et al. (2000) for Greenland ice sheet 
analysis, and Krabill and Wright (2000) for coastal data 
analysis. 
erosion, deriving volumetric net change, and means of net 
volume change per unit area (m?/m?) during periods of 1996- 
1997, 1997-1998, and 1998-2000. The study areas were 
categorized as developed, undeveloped, and nourished beaches 
on a yearly basis for the period of 1996 to 2000. 
2. STUDY AREA 
  
Fig. 1. Study area of Assateague Island on the Eastern Shore, 
Virginia. 
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