We are surveying ground reference data to assist in the process of visually interpreting aerial imagery of the site to create a landcover time series. We will have 4-5 areas of interest throughout the island, where we will generate 50 random points across each AOI.
Location
Fire Island National Seashore, NY
Summary
Collected random point survey locations across 4 areas of interest (one AOI per day, September 16-19). The number of random points at each AOI varied slightly due to terrain navigability and access (point counts will be finalized after reviewing and publishing the data, our goal point count per AOI after considering these accessibility limitations was 30). At each surveyed point we noted the ecogeomorphic state (e.g. beach), landcover class (e.g. sand), secondary cover class if the cover within the quadrat was mixed, vegetation functional group (e.g. herbaceous or woody shrub), vegetation density, vegetation height, substrate, and any misc. notes that may be relevant to the point (e.g. if we were surveying the point at the edge of a shrub thicket that we couldn't walk through when the point was more in the center of the thicket). We systematically took geotagged cell phone photos of each random point location for review of the sampling location post-fieldwork -- one "context" photo of the quadrat placed in the larger landscape, one "top down" photo of the quadrat clearly showing its contents, one "veg height" photo with the measurement stick in the photo for scale (if applicable), and one "substrate" photo which was a close-up of the substrate with a quarter in the image for scale (if applicable). We also collected at least 200 geotagged cell phone photos going to/at/going back from each AOI to serve as additional ground reference data (referred to as "landscape photos" but we will consider a clearer name for publication).
Info derived
We will take an RTK and survey in these locations, take field notes of the type of landcover the point is located on (e.g. landcover type, vegetation type if applicable, veg density if applicable, substrate, etc.), and take cell phone photos illustrating site conditions at each point. The field note measurements, e.g. veg density, will be constrained using a 1 m x 1 m quadrat.
Comments
Will edit closer to dates if changes are expected.
