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<br />FINAL REPORT, November 2003 <br />High-jlow Requirements for the Duchesne River <br /> <br />Error in polygon area caused by photograph distortion has been empirically determined to <br />average about 3 percent when working near the edges of photographs where distortion is most <br />exaggerated (Van Steeter and Pitlick 1998). As we mapped near the centers of photographs as <br />much as possible, error in polygon area from photograph distortion is probably well below this <br />value. Large-scale registration errors like those described by reported RMS errors have a muted <br />effect on errors in polygon area because these deviations from true coordinates tend to displace <br />all portions of a polygon in a similar direction and magnitude. The result, especially for small <br />polygons, is a simple translation of polygon location with little effect on polygon shape or area. <br />Taken together, we assumed that all sources of error produce no more than a 10 percent error in <br />the average channel width reported in this study. An exception was made for subreach 2 from <br />the 1948 coverage, where the reported channel width is unreliable. <br /> <br />Areas of Erosion and Deposition <br /> <br />Areas of erosion and deposition between sequential coverages were obtained for <br />subreaches 5-19 by performing a spatial union in ArclInfo and classifying the resulting change <br />polygons as areas of erosion, deposition, or no change (Table 3). Important potential sources of <br />error in the reported erosion/deposition areas included mapping errors and positional errors due <br />to systematic shifts in the coordinate system. Mapping error in this context consisted of incorrect <br />or inconsistent placement of unit boundaries due to the gradational nature of many boundaries. <br />An example would be a floodplain surface that gradually grades into a terrace surface over an <br />extended slope. Variation in placement of the boundary between the two units on successive <br />photo series could result in an apparent change from floodplain to terrace where no real change <br />occurred. Errors of this type were located and eliminated by visual inspection of the relevant <br />change polygons. It should be pointed out that transitions between high bars and floodplains <br />were considered to represent no change with respect to erosion or deposition because these <br />surfaces are found at similar elevations in this study area. Their differences lay primarily in the <br />extent of vegetation colonization and in lateral distance from the active channel. <br />Positional errors associated with the overlay of polygons from coverages for different <br />years are more problematic than are errors within a single coverage. This is because feature <br />shifts due to photograph distortion or inadequate control points in one coverage are independent <br />of feature shifts associated with the other coverage. Consider two successive coverages, each <br /> <br />18 <br />