Project Overview 

An initial broad scale analysis will be done for the period 2001 to 2019 using Landsat and Sentinel imagery. A land cover analysis will be used to detect, and map suspect areas of erosion occurrence as best as can be derived from multi-temporal analysis and suitable change detection technique. A more detailed study will be carried out using IKONOS, QuickBird and WorldView-2. All 3 sets of imagery will be radiometrically calibrated to ground surface reflectance by utilising the calibration method below. The calibration parameters are provided in the imagery metadata. The project will assess a mixture of protected and farmed areas with different land management systems and stocking densities. Links to habitat can be made through the broad scale habitat map from SAERI’s Coastal Mapping project. There is currently no planned fieldwork.

 Project Objectives

• Assess changes in erosion across particular sites between the baseline of 2001-2003 and 2019.
• Determine whether changes in erosion are due to existing areas increasing or decreasing in size or due to new patches appearing and old ones disappearing
• Determine the ratio of erosion patches that are a) increasing in size, b) decreasing in size, c) appeared recently, d) have disappeared
• If erosion change patterns are different between areas, determine whether there are patterns between different habitats
• If erosion change patterns are different between areas, determine whether they can be related to land management and stocking density

Highlights for July 2020- June 21

The research is on hold because I went away on medical last year. On resumption I will be restarting the research, so I am waiting for a response from the one of the universities I am looking forward to doing the research with.