Sensitivity of the Automatic Determination of Sand Transport Direction and Rate to Dune Morphology (Invited)

Measurements of rates of dune migration and sand flux are important to understanding the dynamics of aeolian systems, including sand encroachment, desertification, and response to changes in climate. The recent development of the Coregistration of Optically Sensed Images and Correlation (COSI-Corr) algorithm allows a unique remote-sensing approach for measuring dune migration rates. Fast- and slow-moving dunes have been analyzed by previous researchers using the algorithm, but the technique has mostly been tested on simple dune forms, which lack second-order geomorphic features that might cause errors. Our work tested the algorithm’s sensitivity to different dune types and evaluated the performance of the algorithm by making comparisons to previous studies and manual traces of the dunes in a GIS. Different parameters were chosen when applying the COSI-Corr algorithm, which were set according to the expected magnitude of dune displacement and the dune size with respect to image resolution. The dunes under study were chosen from the Namib Desert in locations where dune migration rates had previously been measured. These areas included (1) barchan dunes in Walvis Bay, (2) linear dunes just south of the Kuiseb River and (3) convoys of barchan dunes in the southern Namib. Orthorectified ASTER data from different dates were used to study the incremental and maximal changes between 1967 and 2009. These and other dune areas were studied to understand how varied geographic conditions (e.g.., the presence of coastlines, topography and background surface reflectance) affect the algorithm results. Walvis Bay dune migration vectors indicate rates between 3 and 30 m/yr to the north-northeast, which compares well to the range of previously reported values (2-27 m/yr). Individual dune migration rates between 1961 and 2005 also compared well to distances measured from dune crests in a GIS. Some vectors are overestimated because of interdune albedo effects, resulting from variable soil moisture. Northerly migration of dunes located along barchan convoys in the Southern Namib Desert was determined to be between 9 and 38 m/yr. This compared well to previously published migration rates of ten individually tracked dunes. Migration rate is found to vary with dune size in this area, although the COSI-Corr results have a number of interpretation challenges because of changes in dune shape. Between 2000 and 2006, the overall displacement of small dunes superimposed on linear dunes is between 3-11 m/yr to the north. Interdune displacement vectors in the linear dune area are noisy, which is probably the result of variable vegetation that causes seasonal differences in albedo. The north-south oriented crestline of the linear dunes changes laterally with season by only a few meters, but the magnitude of seasonal crest movement could not be accurately determined due to the error resulting from image spatial resolution; improved results are expected with accurately orthorectified, high spatial resolution imagery of the dunes.