Sensitivity Analysis of Dune Height Measurements Along Cross-shore Profiles Using a Novel Method for Dune Ridge Extraction

In barrier islands where communities are subjected to hazards including storm surge and high wave height, coastal dunes offer the first line of defense to property and vital infrastructure. When dunes are over-washed, substantial damage, including complete destruction of buildings and roads can occur. For this reason, dunes are an integral aspect of coastal hazard management. As new, more efficient mapping and analysis technologies evolve, currently used methodologies should be regularly be reexamined in order to ensure the development of the most effective coastal management strategies. Currently, topographical parameters, such as dune height, are usually measured along evenly spaced, shore-perpendicular beach profiles. In previous studies, profile spacing has varied from 20m to over 500m, however, it has been shown that dune height can vary substantially over tens of meters. Profile spacing is a compromise between the resources needed to perform high-resolution measurements and ensuring the capture of meaningful dune features. While it is often clear how the choice of profile spacing will affect the resources needed to perform the analysis, it is often unclear how spacing affects the ability to capture significant dune variation and prevent omission of a narrow dune breach that can open the way for significant flooding. In this study, the structure of alongshore variation in dune height is investigated. The studied dune ridge is located in the Outer Banks, North Carolina, USA and stretches 18km from south of Oregon Inlet (75:31:19W, 35:46:03N) to Rodanthe (75:27:56W, 35:36:31N). The dune ridge is extracted from a 0.5m resolution Digital Elevation Model (DEM) that was interpolated from airborne lidar data using regularized spline with tension. The lidar data was collected in March 2008 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A dune ridge is usually identified as the highest elevation along a shore-perpendicular profile or where ocean-facing slope meets landward-facing slope. In this study, a novel approach for dune ridge extraction is proposed. First, two alongshore end-points of the studied dune ridge are identified using a standard, profile-based method. Then, the dune ridge is traced as the least cost path connecting the two end-points on a cost surface that represents the cumulative penalty for tracing a low elevation path. The cost surface is derived from elevation (i.e., elevation is equal to the cologarithm of the cost). The extracted dune ridge is then sampled at the DEM resolution of 0.5m and analysis of dune ridge height is performed. Statistics on variation in dune height are computed to help understand the sensitivity of dune height measurements to profile spacing and placement. Preliminary results suggest that dune height becomes nearly uncorrelated within 50m and ranges on average nearly a half meter within a five meter window suggesting that dune height measurements are sensitive to profile placement.