Journal of Korea Water Resources Association ISSN:2799-8746(Print) 2799-8754(Online) 한국수자원학회 논문집

Due to the revision of the River Act and the enactment of the Act on the Investigation, Planning, and Management of Water Resources, a regular bed change survey has become mandatory and a system is being prepared such that local governments can manage water resources in a planned manner. Since the topography of a bed cannot be measured directly, it is indirectly measured via contact-type depth measurements such as level survey or using an echo sounder, which features a low spatial resolution and does not allow continuous surveying owing to constraints in data acquisition. Therefore, a depth measurement method using remote sensing-LiDAR or hyperspectral imaging-has recently been developed, which allows a wider area survey than the contact-type method as it acquires hyperspectral images from a lightweight hyperspectral sensor mounted on a frequently operating drone and by applying the optimal bandwidth ratio search algorithm to estimate the depth. In the existing hyperspectral remote sensing technique, specific physical quantities are analyzed after matching the hyperspectral image acquired by the drone's path to the image of a surface unit. Previous studies focus primarily on the application of this technology to measure the bathymetry of sandy rivers, whereas bed materials are rarely evaluated. In this study, the existing hyperspectral image-based water depth estimation technique is applied to rivers with vegetation, whereas spatio-temporal hyperspectral imaging and cross-sectional hyperspectral imaging are performed for two cases in the same area before and after vegetation is removed. The result shows that the water depth estimation in the absence of vegetation is more accurate, and in the presence of vegetation, the water depth is estimated by recognizing the height of vegetation as the bottom. In addition, highly accurate water depth estimation is achieved not only in conventional cross-sectional hyperspectral imaging, but also in spatio-temporal hyperspectral imaging. As such, the possibility of monitoring bed fluctuations (water depth fluctuation) using spatio-temporal hyperspectral imaging is confirmed.