Mapping tornado Ida damage: A multispectral Remote Sensing analysis in Montgomery County, Philadelphia region

Keywords: Remote sensing, vegetation damage, hurricane Ida, NDVI
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 1

Abstract

Hurricane Ida on September 1, 2021, caused catastrophic damages to structures, vegetation, and urban spaces in some parts of Philadelphia region. The combination of the flash flood and storm surge most likely had an adverse effect on the local vegetation and ecosystem of this region, yet due to the novelty of this incident, it has not been investigated. It is essential to evaluate the potential impacts of tornado Ida on local vegetation cover change to support post-hurricane ecosystem management. The multi-temporal Sentinel-2B images of the study area were acquired from USGS Earth Explorer and used as the main dataset for this study. The Tasseled Cap Transformation (TCT) maps were used to assess the vegetation coverage change before and after Ida. Land cover map was produced by supervised classification algorithm. The findings of this study show that a significant portion of the forest site (740 ha.) of study area (5000 ha.) and around 80% of the total forest area is directly affected by the Tornado Ida in September of 2021.