EVALUATION OF UAV-BORNE PHOTOGRAMMETRY AND LASER SCANNING FOR 3D TOPOGRAPHIC CHANGE ANALYSIS AT AN ACTIVE ROCK GLACIER

Abstract

Point clouds derived from UAV-borne laser scanning and UAV-borne photogrammetry provide new opportunities for 3D topographic monitoring in geographic research. The airborne acquisition strategy overcomes common challenges of ground-based techniques, such as limited spatial coverage or heterogeneous measurement distribution, and allows flexible repeated acquisitions at high temporal and spatial resolution. While UAV-borne 3D sensing techniques are expected to thereby enhance geographic monitoring, their specific potential for methods and algorithms of 3D change analysis is yet to be investigated. In our study, we assess point clouds originating from UAV-borne photogrammetry using dense image matching (DIM) and UAV-borne laser scanning (ULS) as input for 3D topographic change analysis at an active rock glacier in the Austrian Alps. We analyse surface change by using ULS and DIM point clouds of 2019 and 2021 as input for two state-of-the-art methods for pairwise surface change analysis: (1) The Multiscale Model to Model Cloud Comparison (M3C2) algorithm and (2) a recent M3C2-based approach (CD-PB M3C2) using plane correspondences to reduce the uncertainty of quantified change. We evaluate ULS-based and DIM-based change analysis regarding their performance in (1) achieving high spatial coverage of derived changes, (2) accurately quantifying magnitudes and uncertainty of change, and (3) detecting significant change (change magnitudes > associated uncertainty). As reference we use change quantified between two terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) surveys undertaken simultaneously with the ULS and DIM data acquisitions. Our study shows the improved spatial coverage of M3C2 achieved with point clouds acquired with UAVs (+ 60% of core points used for change analysis). For CD-PB M3C2, ULS and DIM point clouds enabled a spatially more uniform distribution of plane pairs used for change quantification and a slightly higher spatial coverage (+6% – +7% of core points used for change analysis) compared to the TLS reference. Magnitudes of M3C2 change were closer to the TLS reference for ULS-ULS (mean difference: 0.04 m; std. dev.: 0.05 m) compared to ULS-DIM (mean difference: 0.12 m; std. dev.: 0.08 m). Similar results were obtained for CD-PB M3C2 using ULS-ULS (mean difference: 0.02 m; std. dev.: 0.01 m) and ULS-DIM (mean difference: 0.06 m; std. dev.: 0.01 m). Moreover, magnitudes of change were above the associated uncertainty in 82% – 89% (M3C2) and 89% – 90% (CD-PB M3C2) of the area of change analysis. Our findings demonstrate the potential of ULS and DIM point clouds as input for accurate 3D topographic change analysis for the study at hand and can support the design and setup of 3D/4D Earth observation systems for rock glaciers and natural scenes with complex topography, such as landslides or debris covered glaciers.