On a workstation (AMD Threadripper 3960X /AsRock TRX40 Creator motherboard/256GB 3000MHz RAM) using Win10x64, all Aerial Imagery (and associated positional data) and 21 of 34 available Ground Control Points were brought into an Agisoft Metashape Pro (v. 1.6.5) project based on identification in the imagery. Only one ground control point, #34, was used as a control point to help 'lock' in the camera positions whereas the rest of the points were used as check points. See the Aerial Imagery citation metadata for Metashape Reference Settings inputs. To align in a 4D manner (see Sherwood and others, 2018) additional imagery and positions were added from 2019-08-30, 2019-09-02, 2019-09-08, 2019-09-12, and 2019-09-13 (see contact person below for imagery data, in publication prep). The additional imagery improves the horizontal and vertical accuracy but are not used past this initial alignment process step; similar products can be reproduced without them. The following steps were performed on the Metashape project in the geographic coordinate system NAD83(2011) in ellipsoid height following the general guidance of Over and others (2021):
1. Separate camera models and camera groups were created for each flight date.
2. Imagery (with positions) are aligned to create a point cloud using a 'High' alignment setting, keypoint limit of 70,000, tiepoint limit of 0, generic preselection selected, and reference preselection via source selected. The tiepoint accuracy was set to 1 pixel.
3. The resultant point cloud was filtered using one iteration of the 'Reconstruction uncertainty' filter at a level of 10, one iteration of the 'Projection accuracy' filter at a level of 3, and two iterations of the 'Reprojection accuracy' filer at a level of 0.3 (in the second iteration the 'fit additional corrections' option was turned on). With each filter iteration points are selected, deleted, and then the camera model optimized to refine the focal length, cx, cy, k1, k2, k3, p1, and p2 camera model coefficients.
4. Natural breaks in the final alignment product were identified based on bodies of water or the extreme northern and southern ends of a flight (see PostFlorence_InletMap.jpg on the larger citation landing page
https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/6037cc78d34eb1203117512d). These 'chunks' are the vicinity of the Virginia-North Carolina border (VA is used to denote this northern extent) to Oregon Inlet, Oregon Inlet to Hattaras Inlet, Hattaras Inlet to Ocracoke Inlet, Ocracoke Inlet to Ophelia Inlet, Ophelia Inlet to Beaufort Inlet, Beaufort Inlet to Bogue Inlet, Bogue Inlet to New River Inlet, and New River Inlet to Oak Island. For each chunk all aligned images and associated tie points in that section were kept and the remainder deleted.
Sherwood, C.R., Warrick, J.A., Hill, A.D., Ritchie, A.C., Andrews, B.D. and Plant, N.G., 2018. Rapid, remote assessment of Hurricane Matthew impacts using four-dimensional structure-from-motion photogrammetry. Journal of Coastal Research, 34(6), pp.1303-1316.
