Field Activity Details for field activity 2024-022-FA

Other ID: Fire Island National Seashore September 2024

Status: Completed

Organization(s): USGS, Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center

Funding Program(s): Other (Other)

Principal Investigator(s): Erika Lentz

Affiliate Investigator(s):

Information Specialist(s): Alexandra Evans

Data Type(s): Visual Identification: Ground Truthing, Location-Elevation: Navigation, Imagery: Photo

Scientific Purpose/Goals: 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.

Vehicle(s):

Start Port/Location: Fire Island, NY

End Port/Location: Fire Island, NY

Start Date: 2024-09-16

End Date: 2024-09-19

Equipment Used: Digital camera, Reconnaissance, Emlid RS3

Information to be 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.

Summary of Activity and Data Gathered: 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).

Staff: Marie Bartlett, Sara Zeigler, Alexandra Evans

Affiliate Staff:
Jordan Raphael: National Park Service FIIS

Notes:

Location:

Fire Island National Seashore, NY

Platform(s):

Publications

Portals/Viewers

Data Acquired