Last Updated: January 2018

Version: ArcMap 10.3

Exercise 3: Estimating Volume of

Mining Sludge

Introduction
Planning a mining site cleanup might require an estimate of how much sludge must be removed from
the bottom of a settling pond. Image-derived DTMs work well for estimating waste volume above
ground but usually do poorly with modelling underwater terrain. This is because water usually results in
noise in the point cloud and resulting DTM. In this exercise, we will use ArcMap to digitize the pond
perimeter and to generate an interpolated bathymetric model (BM). We will then use the BM to
estimate to estimate the amount of water and sludge in the pond.

Objectives
• Estimate the volume of water and sludge in a settling pond

Prerequisites
• Completion of UAS Image Processing exercises 1 and 2
• ArcMap v10.3 or newer installed on your machine.

Table of Contents
Part 1: Digitize pond......................................................................................................................... 2
Part 2: Bathymetric surface and volume estimate .......................................................................... 5

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Part 1: Digitize pond
The high-spatial resolution and accuracy of UAS imagery allow users to precisely digitize features. In this
section, we will take the orthomosaic created in exercise 2 and use tools in ArcMap to digitize the
perimeter of a settling pond.

A. Add Orthomosaic to ArcMap

1. Open ArcMap.
2. Click the Add data button (see following figure).

3. Navigate to your project folder and select the orthomosaic that you created in Exercise 2.
4. Click Add.

B. Create a polyline shapefile

1. Open the Catalog viewer in ArcMap (Windows and then Catalog).
2. Navigate to your project folder and right-click your project folder. Select New and then
Shapefile.
i. Give the shapefile a name (e.g., pond_perimeter)
ii. Feature type: Polyline
iii. Set the Spatial Reference to NAD 1983 UTM Zone 11 and click OK (see below).

C. Digitize pond perimeter

1. Zoom into your orthomosaic close enough to clearly see the pond edge (e.g., scale of 1:150).
2. If the Snapping and Editor Toolbars aren’t active, add them by going to Customize, Toolbars
and then clicking on Snapping and Editor. The toolbars should now be added to ArcMap.
3. In the Table of Contents, right click your new shapefile, then click Edit Features and then Start
Editing.
i. On the Editor Toolbar, click the dropdown arrow then click Editing Windows and then
Create Features.
ii. In the Create Features window, click your new shapefile then set the Construction Tools
to Line.

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 4. In the Snapping toolbar, select Snapping and then Snap to Sketch to activate it.
i. Select the End Snapping button (see following figure) to activate it. This will allow you to
make a closed polygon for the pond.

5. Begin digitizing the pond perimeter by left clicking on the pond edge to place your first vertex.
6. Continue to place vertices around the pond by left clicking every few meters (use CTRL + Z to
undo incorrectly placed vertices). Continue until you get back to the first vertex. Double click
on the first vertex to close and finalize the polygon (see following figure and note).

NOTE: If you are digitizing a lot of ponds and other features, you may want to activate Stream Mode,
which automatically places vertices without having to left click for each vertex. To activate Stream Mode,
select Editor in the Editor Toolbar and select Options. Under the General tab, change the Stream
tolerance to the distance that you want ArcMap to place each vertex (for digitizing this pond, a 2 meter
spacing is probably adequate). Click OK to keep the new settings. While you are digitizing a feature,
Stream Mode can be turned on and off by hitting F8 on your keyboard.

7. On the Editor Toolbar, click Save Edits and then Stop Editing.

D. Convert pond perimeter polygon to points.

In order to create an interpolated bathymetric surface in ArcMap, you first need to convert the pond
perimeter polygon to points.
1. Open the Search window (select Windows, in ArcMap’s main menu, and Search)
i. Type in Feature Vertices to Points. Find and double click the tool to open.
2. Select your pond perimeter shapefile for the input feature.
3. Select a location and name (e.g., pond_perimeter_points.shp) for the output feature class.
4. Use All as the Point Type and then select OK. Your new point shapefile should contain a point
for each of your original vertices (see following figure).

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 E. Add elevation values to the perimeter points
1. In the Table of Contents, right-click the perimeter point file then click Open Attribute Table.
2. In the upper left corner of the attribute table window, click the dropdown arrow then click
Add Field (it will be greyed out if you are in an edit session).
3. In the Add Field window, set the name to elevation and the Type to Float (see below).

4. Click OK.
5. In the Attribute Table, right-click the elevation column header then click Field Calculator.
6. In the Field Calculator window, set elevation = 1402.5 then click OK (see following figure).

i. Every point should now have a value of 1402.5 in its elevation column (see following
figure). This elevation was estimated from the DTM created in exercise 2.

F. Merge elevation points

We have provided a shapefile of 14 points, along the center transect of the pond, which have depth
measurements. We will now combine these points with the perimeter points.

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 1. Use the Search window to find the Merge (data management) tool.
2. In the Merge tool, set the Input dataset to your pond perimeter points file and the depth
points shapefile (located in the Reference folder of your project folder).
3. Specify the Output dataset to be within your project folder and give the output a name (e.g.,
merged_pond_points.shp).
4. Click OK. You should now have a new shapefile that includes both perimeter and depth
points.

Part 2: Bathymetric surface and volume estimate

In this section, we will use the pond elevation points (combined perimeter and depth) to create an
interpolated bathymetric surface of the pond bottom. This interpolated raster will then be used to
estimate the volume of water and sludge in the pond. Several tools exist for interpolating surfaces based
on sample points. Some of the interpolation methods found in ArcMap are Inverse Distance Weighted
(IDW), Kriging, Natural Neighbor, Spline, and Topo to Raster. In this exercise, we will use the Spline
method, since it is simple to use and produces a smooth surface that passes exactly through the input
points.

A. Create bathymetric surface

1. Use the Search window to find the Spline (3D Analyst or Spatial Analyst) tool. You must have
either the 3D Analyst or Spatial Analyst extension activated to use this tool (Customize in
ArcMap’s main menu and Extensions).
i. In the Spline tool, set the Input point features to the merged pond points shapefile.
ii. Set the Z value field to Elevation
iii. Specify your project folder as the Output directory and name the output raster (e.g.,
bathymetric_surface.tif).
iv. Use default Output cell size (should be around 0.24 meters)
v. Select Regularized for Spline type. This generally creates a smoother surface than
Tension.
vi. Use the default Weight value (0.1) and Number of points (12).
vii. Click OK. You should now have a raster that consists of the interpolated values that
represent elevations of the pond bottom. The following steps will improve the view of this
raster.

B. Clip out area of interest

Next, you need to clip the bathymetric surface to the pond perimeter.
1. Use the Search window to find the Clip (data management) tool and open it.
i. Input Raster: bathymetric surface raster
ii. Output Extent: pond perimeter polygon
iii. Use Input Features for Clipping Geometry: checked
iv. Set Output Raster: project directory and raster name (e.g.,
bathymetric_surface_clipped.tif)

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 v. NoData Value: use default (should be -3.402823e+038)
vi. Maintain Clipping Extent: checked
vii. Click OK.
2. Inspect the output in ArcMap and turn off the non-clipped raster in the table of contents.
3. Right click on the clipped raster in the table of contents and select Properties.
i. Select the Symbology tab and, in the upper left corner, make sure that Stretched is
selected.
ii. Change the color ramp to a multicolor scheme, such as the one shown in the following
figure.

iii. Under the stretch section, place a checkmark next to Invert.

iv. Click OK to apply the new settings (see following figure).

v. Inspect the output in ArcMap. You can sample the elevation values of the raster by using
the Identify tool (see following figure).

C. Estimate sludge volume

Now that we have a bathymetric surface, we can estimate the volume of the water and the sludge
on the bottom of the pond. This calculation requires an average sludge depth estimate. For this
exercise we will assume that the average sludge depth is 0.2 meters.
1. Use the Search window to find the Surface Volume (3D Analyst) tool.

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 i. Input Surface: raster of clipped bathymetric surface
ii. Set Output text file to your project directory and give it a name (e.g.,
volume_estimates.txt)
iii. Reference Plane: BELOW (we want to measure the volume below the elevation of the
pond perimeter)
iv. Plane Height: 1402.5 (pond perimeter elevation)
v. Click OK (see below).

2. After to tool finishes running, right click the volume estimates text file in the table of contents
and click Open.
i. Find the area and volume measurements in the table (see below). The value under
Volume (1,200 cubic meters) is the estimated volume of water in the pond.

3. To calculate the volume of sludge in the pond we must multiply the 3D pond area by the
average thickness of the sludge layer (0.2 meters); this gives us a volume estimate of 330
cubic meters (1647 x 0.2). This information may be useful for producing time and cost
estimates for pond drainage (how long will this take?), sludge removal (how many truck load
are needed?), and sludge depositing (how much space is required?).

Congratulations! You have completed Exercise 3. You now know how to digitize features from
UAS imagery, create a raster from sampled elevations, and generate an interpolated surface
using the Spline method. Although these final volume calculations are only estimates, they
provide valuable information for early stages of project planning.

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