Measuring bank retreat in fluvial environments with Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS)

Abstract. In the last years methods for measuring bank erosion and sedimentation have been used to understand the process of river migration to get a better understanding of river migration. For this purpose a river bank in a medium low land river has been chosen. The river bank has been measured with a terrestrial laser scanner with a high resolution over the last three years. The yielded point clouds have been filtered and digital elevation models (DEM) have been created. These DEMs have been used to compare the mass balance and slope gradient changes between the scans. To achieve this goal, the slope gradient has been averaged horizontally and vertically. In addition, statistical analyses have been used to verify the significance of changes between the scans. The results show that erosion and sedimentation processes occur simultaneous. Further is the slope gradient a valuable tool to investigate different sections within a point cloud from terrestrial laser scanner.