Digital Data

During late summer 1997, a plan was formulated to determine the magnitude, spatial patterns, and causative processes of El Niño-induced change along the west coast of the United States. The agencies responsible for this plan include; Wallops Flight Facility at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Coastal Services Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), and the Coastal and Marine Program at the United States Geological Survey (USGS). A key element of the plan was to survey 1200 km of representative reaches of the west coast both prior to and following the El Niño winter storms using scanning airborne laser altimetry, a technology that has only recently been applied to coastal change research.

NASA's Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM)

NASA's Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM) is an example of a scanning airborne laser altimetry system. The ATM can survey beach topography along hundreds of kilometers of coast in a single day with data densities that cannot be achieved with traditional survey technologies . For each pass along the coast, the ATM lidar scanned a 375-m wide swath along the aircraft flight line.

For most of the 1997-1998 study area, four overlapping passes were flown yielding a typical surveyed swath ~700 m wide with laser spot elevations every 3 square meters. The aircraft pitch, roll, and heading were obtained with an inertial navigation system and the positioning of the aircraft was determined using kinematic Global Positioning System (GPS) techniques.
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  ATM recorded for October of 1997

 Grid for April 98

 Eroded and Accreted Beach Erosion Cross Sections