Stream bank erosion is a widely studied process in fluvial geomorphology. Different studies have used a variety of methods such as erosion pins and historical photography to quantify the rates of stream bank erosion and such methods have variable scales and level of detail. This study analyzed stream bank erosion in two low order streams using terrestrial LiDAR.

The two streams include an Unnamed creek near Tennessee, Illinois and Thompson Creek near Lorton, Virginia. Both streams are in protected forested areas with relatively minimum human disturbance. Each stream was scanned twice per year since 2015. It included both 3D point cloud as well as orthophotos of each site. The repeat scans of each site were processed using Leica Cyclone Suite. The point cloud data of the plots was turned into a TIN mesh and the seasons were subtracted from each other to calculate the amount of material lost to calculate the rates of erosion. Results indicate that moss does not have a significant effect at reducing erosion, however, further research is needed to understand the full effect of moss on the streambank.