Southeast Regional Coastal Monitoring Programme
Airborne remote sensing techniques
- Aerial surveys and photogrammetric profiling
- Digital Aerial Photos
- LIDAR surveys of cliffs and saltmarsh systems
- Annual Beach Monitoring Survey
Airborne remote sensing techniques are used to capture data at a variety of sites, to provide coverage of special features, or where these techniques are either more practical or efficient than land based methods. Surveys for a total of 530km frontage are monitored exclusively by remote sensing techniques. The whole of the programme area is also surveyed by airborne remote sensing methods to provide supplementary data to the land based techniques.
The annual ABMS aerial survey (profiles typically 200m apart and plan shape data for cliffs and saltmarshes) and LIDAR models every 3-5 years provide the basis for the remote sensing programme. This will generally provide appropriate coverage for the following categories of shoreline
Land based survey methods are not generally practicable for hard cliff areas. Plan shape changes and geometric changes arising from cliff movements are better mapped using a combination of LIDAR and aerial photography.
The relatively simple structure of the South Downs Cell, the tidal range characteristics, and the presence of a drying rock bed platform enables profile data to be collected more efficiently by low-level aerial survey than by land survey methods; this approach has been adopted for the whole of this coastal cell. Land surveys will be conducted only in connection with storm events.
