Proximal and ultimate influences on planform change in Bayou Pierre, Mississippi
Description
Channel incision and associated planform changes are widespread in the Gulf Coastal Plain of the United States, following a century of sediment reduction activities. These processes cause numerous threats to infrastructure, social, and ecological systems. While the drivers of channel incision are well documented for some watersheds in the region, others remain understudied. Bayou Pierre, Mississippi, is a small watershed draining directly to the lower Mississippi River with a contentious debate regarding origins of erosional processes. The watershed is home to one listed species (Bayou Darter Nothonotus rubrus) as well as a diverse aquatic biota assemblage. Determining potential drivers of erosional activities in the watershed will be critical for effective mitigation or restoration activities. This dataset compiles information from numerous other datasets to construct histories of Mississippi River architectural change, land use change, and climate patterns to construct a history of potential erosional influences in the watershed. It further contains original measurements of planform dynamics over a sixty year period, and analyses of how changes to planform relate to recent and historical influences. In addition, a secondary assessment of both accuracy and precision of measurement methods are included.
Notes
Funding provided by: United States Army Corps of Engineers
Crossref Funder Registry ID: https://ror.org/05w4e8v21
Award Number: W912HZ21C0064
Methods
Historical and contemporary watershed influence data were collected via extraction from existing datasets. Mississippi River historic planform dynamics were derived from digitized plates from Fisk (1944) and aerial imagery from 2010. Land use data were extracted from digitized US Census records at the county level (1840 - 2012), the FORE-SCE backcast, observed, and scenario B1 forecast data (1938 - 2023), and National Land Cover Database data (2001 - 2019). Secondary analysis of land use data occurred to generate estimates of land use proportions in the watershed. Percent upstream forest was calculated at catchment and 200m buffer scales, for three focal reaches in the watershed, using FOR-SCE datasets. Total percent coverage of all land use categories for the entire watershed was also calculated using FORE-SCE datasets and NLCD datasets. Hydrologic data were extracted from the Climate Data Online database for counties drained by Bayou Pierre (1901 - 2022), the USGS gage at Willows, MS (1961 - 2022), and the Mississippi River at Vicksburg from the USACE Rivergages database (1901 - 2022). Forest stand age data were extracted from the USDA Forest Inventory Analysis dataset, provided as raster data with the FORE-SCE datasets. Accessory datasets were extracted from the NHD+ attributes dataset to facilitate analyses.
Planform analysis was conducted on aerial imagery for three approximately 10km focal reaches in Bayou Pierre, Mississippi. Aerial imagery included single-frame photographs (1949, 1953, 1969), NAPP imagery (1982, 1985), NHAP imagery (1992, 1995), and NAIP imagery (2004 - 2007, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020, 2021). All imagery prior to 1995 was georeferenced in QGIS. We manually digitized unvegetated channel centerlines for entire reaches for analysis of channel length and channel perpendicular cross-section features at 200m intervals for analysis of channel width. We further created channel centerline features split at 1km intervals for analysis of channel displacement.
As an assessment of accuracy, we digitized TIGER/line road intersection ground control points in a subset of aerial imagery years. We further repeated channel measurements for 1953, 1982, 2004, and 2021 independently, to assess precision of methodology. We provide analytical scripts to conduct all analyses and accuracy assessments pertinent to a related manuscript.
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Additional details
Related works
- Is cited by
- 10.1002/rra.4266 (DOI)
- Is derived from
- 10.5281/zenodo.10524778 (DOI)