Proceedings of the 19th IAHR-APD Congress 2014, Hanoi, Vietnam

ISBN xxx-xxxx-xx-x

IMAGE ANALYSIS OF SURFACE GRAIN SIZE DISTRIBUTION OF A COBBLE

BAR SHOT AT VARIOUS HEIGHTS FROM A MULTICOPTER

I. FUJITA(1), Y. TERADA(1), G. KUMANO(1), K. ASAMI(2) & Y. WATANABE(3)

(1) Department of civil engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Kobe University, Kobe, Japan,ifujita@kobe-u.ac.jp
(2) Institute of Rural & Urban Ecology Co., Ltd., Osaka, Japan, asami@sato-mizube.co.jp
(3) Luce Search inc. Hiroshima, Japan, yutaka@luce-s.jp

ABSTRACT
At a bend of a river, especially in the upstream mountainous region, complex sediment and hydraulic phenomena are
taking place and it is important to quantitatively evaluate the phenomena and to predict accurately the sedimentation of a
bar developed there. The study area of the Ibo River investigated in this study is classified as one of such a location and a
famous vegetation of extinction called Anaphalis margaritacea subsp. yedoensis (Kawarahahako in Japanese) can be
found in the bar area. Since the survival of the vegetation is directly related to the transport of sediment or bed variation
of the bar area mainly composed of cobbles, detailed investigation of the sediment components is indispensable for a
better understanding of the phenomenon. In this research, we successfully took aerial photographs of the target site by
using a multi-copter before and after several floods and compared the grain size distributions by an image analysis.

Keywords: Grain Size Distribution; Cobble Bar; Image Analysis; Multi-copter; BASEGRAIN

1. INTRODUCTION
The study area of this research, the river reach of the Ibo
River between 24.6km and 26.8km from the river mouth,
includes a large bend with a cobble bar. The Ibo River has YamazakiDaini(YD)
station
a drainage area of 810km2 with the main river length of
about 70km and flows into the Seto Inland Sea at about
50km west of Kobe city. Most of the river basin consists of
mountainous regions with an average bed slope of about
1/250 in the middle reach of our observation. The design
discharge, with a 100-year return period, has been set at
3000m3/s. This area was selected because the local bar can
be considered as a refuse place for one of the endangered Analysisarea
vegetation, Anaphalis margaritacea subsp. yedoensis
(Kawarahahako in Japanese), classified as Critically
Endangered in the Red Data Book of Japan (Asami et al.
2012). The evolution and involution of the vegetation has
been observed by Asami et al. (2013) for the past several
years and the cobble bar was found to be an appropriate 500m
refuse location for the vegetation even when the area was
submerged subject to a large flood several times during
the investigation periods. However, in order to investigate
the survival of the vegetation more in detail, field Figure 1 Measurement site of the Ibo River
measurements of flood flows and changes of bed
materials by the floods are necessary for reproducing the gauging station upstream of the site is the Yamazaki
phenomena by some numerical simulations. Regarding Daini(YD) station, about 4 kilometers upstream from the
the changes in bed materials of the cobble bar, we site. Another specific feature of the site is that there
successfully investigated the surface images of the bar developed a natural transverse step before the lower flow
before and after a relatively large floods in 2013. A multi- hits the facing mountain and at the same time large rocks
copter was used to capture the images of the cobble bar are distributed closer to the left bank after the bend, which
area and the images were used to analyze grain size all make the flow complicated.
distributions by using an image analysis software. In 2013, we had made a preliminary fields survey of the
site in June expecting a flood to occur in the following
2. MEASUREMENT SITE AND PAST FLOODS period. Floods actually occurred more than once in
October and we conducted the survey again in November.
As mentioned above, the measurement site includes a
The hydrograph at YD station is shown in Figure 2,
large cobble bar at the bend of the Ibo River. The overview
indicating there occurred a largest flood on September 1
of the measurement site is indicated in Figure 1. The
with a peak estimated discharge of about 1000m3/s. A

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 Figure 2 Hydrograph t Yamazaki Daini gauging station
(a) normal flow
(b) peak flood flow on September 1, 2013
Figure 3 Surface images of the Ibo River in normal and peak
flood flow conditions
second flood occurred several days after the first flood on
September 5 with a peak discharge of about 500m3/s. At
each time, surface images were taken from the left bank.
An image shoot nearly at the time of the first flood peak is
presented in Figure 3 together with an image in normal
flow condition. It can be seen that cobble bar was almost
submerged except for a part of vegetation which is not the
endangered one. Therefore, it is obvious that the
endangered vegetation might have been flashed away in
such a flow condition if bed shear stresses had become
greater than critical level. The images thus taken as video
images can be analyzed by applying image analysis
techniques such as a large scale particle image velocimetry
(LSPIV)(Fujita et al. 1998, Le Coz. et al. 2010 ) or space
time IV (STIV) (Fujita et al. 2007), but the images are
under analysis at present and the results will not be
presented in this paper.
3. MEASUREMENT OF EXPOSED GRAIN SIZE
DISTRIBUTION BY USING A MULTI-
COPTER
3.1 Overview of multi-copter
The surface images of the area that covers the cobble bar
was capture by using a remote-controlled multi-copter as
Figure 4 Multi-copter used in surface image capture
Figure 5 Route of multi-copter covering the bar area from
150m from the ground
shown in Figure 4. The body has a weight of 3.8kg, a
diameter of 85cm and a height of 45cm, with six propellers.
The performance of the base model was improved
significantly by additionally installing various functions.
For example, a high definition camera is installed at its
lower side and the angle of the camera can be controlled
from a controller by viewing a monitor in real time
receiving transmitted images from the body. Moreover,
the height of the body is measured and controlled by
using a GPS. The multi-copter used was extremely stable
in the air thanks to little wind at the time of the
measurement. The route of the multi-copter can be
preliminary set on a map as provided in Figure 5, and
once the body reached the starting location in the air, an
automatic measurement of still images at a rate of one
frame per second starts with a speed of about five meter
per second.
First, the airborne images were taken at every second
150m from above the ground level by setting a course that
covers the entire cobble bar zone. Second, the height of the
multi-copter was lowered at 30m from the ground level in
order to capture the cobble images more clearly. Finally,
the measurement height was varied from 5m to 75m at a
fixed location for the purpose of examining the change of
spatial resolution of the images. More specifically, images
were taken 5, 10, 30, 75 and 150 meters from the ground
level.
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 Figure 7 Detection of particles by BASEGRAIN(23m)

Table 1 Particle parameters measured at various heights

Image size Average Minimum
(mm/pix) particle size particle size
(a) before floods (mm) (mm)
5m 1.4258 89.57 6.28
10m 2.3009 91.72 10.06
15m 3.6527 103.10 15.55
20m 4.7737 115.94 20.56
25m 6.4032 133.89 28.75
30m 7.5529 138.34 30.00
50m 12.4697 157.14 53.42
75m 18.3372 187.48 79.77

3.4 Method of estimating optimum particle distribution

Although the exposed particles do not represent all of the

(b) after floods
Figure 6 Synthesized airborne images of the site
3.2 Synthesized images of the entire zone
In order to compare the general view of the site, the
airborne images captured from 150m by overlapping more
than fifty percent were synthesize to form a large single
image as shown in Figure 6. The images are ortho-rectified
by utilizing field measurement data of the ground control
points (GCPs), which we prepared on the ground before
the image capturing. GCP is a rectangular yellow or
orange color panel with a size of about 30 by 40 cm with a
cross on one side. It is evident from Figure 6 that the
surface condition changed significantly after the floods.
3.3 Image analysis software for extracting particle size
distribution
The airborne images of the exposed cobble at the bar can
be used to extract particle information by a sophisticated
image analysis software, BASEGRAIN, which is a free
software on MATLAB. This software is capable to count
the number of particles together with their lengths of
major and minor axes. An example of analyzed image is
shown in Figure 7. Exposed particles mainly composed of
cobbles are detected fairly well indicating directions of
major and minor axes at each particle. However, it can
also be seen that smaller particles cannot be detected due
to the limitation of spatial resolution.
bed material component, it is more appropriate to
estimate the optimum particle size distribution from
airborne images. For that purpose, almost the same place
was captured from the multi-copter at various heights by
keeping the same image size at 1000 by 800 pixel. Table 1
shows the image resolution, the mean diameter, and the
minimum diameter analyzed by BASEGRAIN for the
images captured at several heights that range from 5m to
75m. As can be expected, the spatial image resolution
becomes lower for higher heights and higher for lower
heights, respectively. For example, 1.4mm/pixel for 5-
meter-height and 18.3mm/pixel for 75-meter-height. As is
clear from Table 1, the mean diameter increases with the
heights from 9cm to 19cm. This is because the higher
image can analyze a wider area, by which the number of
large-sized cobbles may increase while smaller-sized
particles become difficult to detect due to a lower spatial
resolution. At the same time, the minimum diameter
detectable by images increase with height as indicated in
Table 1. It should be noted that the minimum diameter
detected at 5-meter-height is about 6mm, which is small
enough when the bed variation has to be considered at the
present site. Figure 8 is the corresponding grain size
distribution measured by the image analysis. The
variation of the distribution comes from the difference in
spatial resolution and measured area.
In order to estimate the actual particle distribution as
accurate as possible, we used the results obtained from 5m
and 30m. Here we assume that a local particle distribution

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 Figure 8 Grain size distribution measured at various heights
(a) 5 meter
(b) 30 meter
Figure 9 Histogram of the number of particles
does not change significantly and synthesis the two
distribution as follows. First, we construct a histogram of
the number of particles for each height as shown in Figure
9. Second, we count, for the two heights, the number of
particles for each representative diameter per unit area
and combine the data by taking average where data
overlaps. Finally, we calculate a mass contribution for
each diameter by assuming particles are sphere.
Calculated grain distribution curves, i.e. grading curves,
are provided in Figure 10, in which curves by discarding
very large data, with a diameter more than 40cm, are also
shown. The results are summarized in Table 2, showing
that the mean diameter dm is about 26cm, d65 is about 27cm
and d90 is about 40cm when all the particle information is
used. However, a particle or a small rock with a diameter
more than 40cm does not seem to contribute to the bed
variation in floods. Therefore, smaller diameter than the
above, dm of about 22cm, d65 about 26cm and d90 about
32cm, seems to be more appropriate when we try to
conduct a flow simulation.
Figure 10 Grain size distribution measured at various heights
Table 2 Particle parameters measured from grating curves
60cm or 50cm or 40cm or
all
less less less
dm
258.7 243.9 237.7 224.8
(mm)
d65
274.4 269.7 268.0 259.8
(mm)
d90
400.8 379.3 362.7 324.1
(mm)
4. COMPARISON OF EXPOSED GRAIN SIZE
DISTRIBUTION BEFORE AND AFTER
FLOODS
4.1 Change in spatial distribution of particle diameters
As already shown in Figure 2, the cobble bar site was
subject to a relatively large floods after the first field
survey conducted in June 2013. The effect of the flood is
evident from Figure 6, indicating a disappearance of
vegetated zone near the river side. In order to investigate
the effect of the floods, particle diameters measured by the
image analysis method presented so far was applied to the
whole bar area. For that purpose, the area, 210m by 410m,
was divided into a number of grids, 22 by 43, with a size
of about 9.5m by 9.5m. For each grid, the above-
mentioned technique was applied to obtain the
representative particle diameters. The image size treated
for each grid is 1000 by 800 pixels which covers most of a
grid area.
The analyzed results for dm and d90, before and after the
floods, are shown in Figure 11 and Figure 12, respectively.
The background image is set the same as Figure 6(a). It
can be noted that the analyzed number of grids is smaller
in June, because the vegetated zone had extended far
upstream in the bar area making the detection of particle
diameter difficult by the image analysis. It is clear from
Figure 11 and Figure 12 that the upstream zone vegetated
before the floods is composed of much smaller particles
than the other zone. On the contrary, the central portion of
the bar has much larger particles compared with the other
zone of the bar, with slight increase of diameter. This may
suggest that the larger cobble particles distributed within
the upstream portion with vegetation were transported in
the downstream direction during the flood and at the
same time the zone with larger cobbles were elongated in
the downstream direction subject to shear forces by the
floods.
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 (a) Point A

Figure 11 Change of mean diameter dm before and after the

floods

(b) Point B

Figure 12 Change of d90 before and after the floods

(c) Point C
Another detectable feature is that decrease of particle size
can be seen just downstream of the larger cobble zone.
Such a decrease of particle diameter can be caused by a
deposition of smaller particle over the zone during the
falling stage of the floods and this makes the apparent
particle size smaller when viewed from above. Deposition
of smaller particles or sand within the zone was actually
observed in the field survey after the floods. Decrease of
particle size was also detected within a narrow zone
behind the central vegetated mound, where finer particles
must have been deposited during the falling stage due to a
decrease of flow velocity downstream of the vegetated
mound. This place actually corresponds to a refuge zone
of the endangered vegetation. (d) Point D

4.2 Local comparison of grain distributions Figure 13 Grain size distribution at various locations
In order to compare the shape of the grain distribution
smaller gravel particles transported from upstream river
curves, several locations were selected within the bar. The
reach. In contrast, little change can be found in the lower
selected four locations are already indicated in Figure 6.
and inner region downstream of the bar such as for the
The respective results are compared in Figure 13. As
points C and D. These facts suggest that part of the
previously mentioned, the particle size increased slightly
cobbles in the upper bar area might have been carried
in the downstream side of the central large cobble zone.
away in the early stage of flood and deposited in the
The measured size distributions are provided in Figure
downstream zone while smaller grains were deposited in
13(a), clearly indicating this trend. At point B, particle size
the downstream area in the falling stage of flood due to
decreased significantly maybe due to the deposition of
the decrease of shear velocity. It should be noted again

5
that the lower inner zone of the bar corresponds to the
refuge place for the endangered vegetation, where particle
size does not show a large change during floods.
5. CONCLUSIONS
Measurements of exposed grain size distribution were
conducted successfully with the aid of airborne images
from a multi-copter and a sophisticated image analysis
software for grain images, BASEGRAIN. The
measurement results before and after the floods that
influenced the bed material clearly indicated spatial
change of representative grain diameters, larger in the
upstream zone and smaller in the lower inner zone, from
which the survival of the endangered vegetation can be
explained. Since the surface video images were recorded
during the floods, more quantitative discussion can be
made after the analysis of surface velocity distributions
and the change in bed elevation by the floods.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We are grateful to the support by Prof. Kawatani and Prof.
Nakayama who are the emeritus professors of Kobe
University. This research was financially supported from
River Environment Fund sponsored by Japan River
Association.

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BASEGRAIN,http://www.basement.ethz.ch/services/To
ols/basegrain