USGS CMG A-1-01-FL Metadata

This lidar-derived submarine topography map was produced as a collaborative
effort between the U.S. Geological Survey
(USGS) Coastal and Marine Geology Program, National Park Service (NPS) South 
Florida/Caribbean Network Inventory and
Monitoring Program, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) 
Wallops Flight Facility. One objective of this
research is to create techniques to survey coral reefs for the purposes of 
habitat mapping, ecological monitoring, change detection,
and event assessment (for example: bleaching, hurricanes, disease outbreaks, and 
so on). As part of this project, data from an
innovative instrument under development at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, the 
NASA Experimental Airborne Advanced Research
Lidar (EAARL) are being used. This sensor has the potential to make significant 
contributions in this realm for measuring water depth
and conducting cross-environment surveys. High spectral resolution, water-column 
correction, and low costs were found to be key
factors in providing accurate and affordable imagery to managers of coastal 
tropical habitats.

The laser soundings used to create this map
were collected during September 2001 and August 2002 by the NASA EAARL
system mounted on a Cessna 310 aircraft.  The EAARL uses a 'waveform-resolving' 
green laser capable of mapping submarine and subaerial
(land) topography in a single overflight. The EAARL system is typically flown
at 300 m altitude AGL, resulting in a 240 m swath
for each flightline. Data collection occurred with approximately 50 percent
overlap between flightlines, resulting in about one laser
sounding per square meter. The data were processed by the USGS Center for
Coastal and Watershed Studies to produce
1-meter resolution raster images that can be easily ingested into a Geographic
Information System (GIS). The data were
organized as 2 km by 2 km data tiles in 32-bit floating-point integer GeoTiff
format. Contour line and hillshade layers were
generated from the lidar data tile and incorporated into this map product.

Brock, J.C., Wright, W.C., Patterson, Matt, Nayegandhi, Amar, Patterson,
Judd, Harris, M.S., and Mosher, Lance, 2006, Biscayne National Park, US
Geological Survey Open File Report 2006-1118.
   
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