IMPROVED CORRECTION METHOD FOR WATER-REFRACTED TERRESTRIAL LASER SCANNING DATA ACQUIRED IN THE MOUNTAIN CHANNEL

Abstract. Detailed information of underwater topography is required for better understanding and prediction of water and sediment transport in a mountain channel. Recent research showed promising utility of green-wavelength Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) for measuring submerged stream-bed structure in fluvial environment. However, difficulty in acquiring reliable underwater data has been remained in the part of mountain channel where water surface has some gradient. Since horizontal water surface was a major premise for the existing water refraction correction method, significant error was resulted in such area. Therefore, this paper presents a modified method to correct water-refracted TLS data acquired over mountain channel with complex water-surface slope. Applicability of the modified method was validated using the field data and compared with the existing correction method and non-corrected data. The results showed that the modified method has much smaller error with RMSE value of 3 mm than the existing method (RMSE = 10 mm) and non-corrected data (RMSE = 23 mm). Presented method successfully corrected water-refracted TLS data acquired over sloped channel. This would enable us to quantitatively measure whole units of complex mountain channels, and help us to understand water dynamics better in the area.