Environment and Rural Affairs Monitoring & Modelling Programme - ERAMMP Report-57: Image Resolution Testing for Soil Erosion and Damage Features

Maintaining healthy soils in Wales is important in order to ensure the sustainable management of natural resources under the environment act. Monitoring of soils in Wales is conducted in order to assess the state and change of soils and forms part of the state of natural resources reporting cycle (SoNaRR), quantify the impact of Glastir on soil health and contribute to a range of other reporting requirements. Soil monitoring by ERAMMP is primarily based on structured sampling of topsoil but has also used aerial photography for peat condition and modelling. This report details work that examines the potential use of remote sensing for assessing the extent of soil erosion and damage (SED), and landsliding from space. The objective was to test different remote sensing imagery data sources, e.g. sentinel (~10m) and planet data (~3m) against high resolution APGB aerial imagery (~0.25m, by Bluesky International Limited), to determine if the resolution of the imagery is acceptable to replace aerial photographs for identifying features. The report summarises two tests of the data, one on the extent of soil erosion and damage and the other on coastal erosion and landslides.