EAARL Coastal TopographyÑNorthern Gulf of Mexico U.S. Geological Survey Data Series 384 By John C. Brock(1), Amar Nayegandhi(2), A. H. Sallenger(1), C. Wayne Wright(3), Laurinda J. Travers(4)and James Lebonitte(2) (1)USGS, FISC St. Petersburg, FL, (2)Jacobs Technology, Contracted with USGS, St. Petersburg, FL, (3)NASA, Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, VA, (4)Eckerd College, Contracted with USGS, St. Petersburg, FL, (2)Jacobs Technology, Contracted with USGS, St. Petersburg, FL TABLE OF CONTENTS Disclaimer System Requirements Project Summary DVD Organization Getting Started Acknowledgments Contacts References DISCLAIMER This DVD publication was prepared by an agency of the United States Government. Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof nor any employee makes any warranty expressed or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed in this report or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference therein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States or any agency thereof. Although all data and software published on this DVD have been used by the U. S. Geological Survey, no warranty, expressed or implied, is made by the U. S. Geological Survey as to the accuracy of the data and related materials and (or) the functioning of the software. The act of distribution shall not constitute any such warranty, and no responsibility is assumed by the U. S. Geological Survey in the use of these data, software, or related materials. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS This DVD can be successfully accessed on computer systems utilizing the following operating systems: Microsoft Windows, Macintosh and UNIX. PROJECT SUMMARY These remotely-sensed, geographically-referenced elevation measurements of lidar-derived coastal topography were produced as a collaborative effort between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), FISC St. Petersburg, Florida and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia. One objective of this research is to create techniques to survey areas for the purposes of geomorphic change studies following major storm events. Other applications of high-resolution topography include: habitat mapping, ecological monitoring, change detection, and eventassessment. As part of this project, data from an innovative instrument, originally developed at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, the NASA Experimental Airborne Advanced Research Lidar (EAARL) are being used. The EAARL system is a raster-scanning, waveform-resolving, green-wavelength (532 nanometer) Lidar designed to map near-shore bathymetry, topography, and vegetation structure simultaneously. The EAARL sensor suite includes the raster-scanning, water-penetrating full-waveform adaptive Lidar, a down-looking RGB digital camera, a high-resolution multi-spectral color Infrared (CIR) camera, two precision dual-frequency kinematic carrier-phase GPS receivers and an integrated miniature digital inertial measurement unit which provide for sub-meter geo-referencing of each laser sample. The nominal EAARL platform is a twin-engine Cessna 310 aircraft, but the instrument may be deployed on a range of light aircraft. A single pilot, a Lidar operator and a data analyst constitute the crew for most survey operations. This sensor has the potential to make significant contributions in measuring sub-aerial and submarine coastal topography within cross-environment surveys. DVD ORGANIZATION There are three top-level files and four top-level directories contained on this DVD. The top-level files are: 1. start.html - This file is intended to be the starting point for DVD access. It is written in the Hyper-Text Markup Language utilized by the World Wide Web (WWW) project and must be opened with a WWW browser. Once opened, the user may browse the DVD's contents as they would browse pages from the WWW. 2. readme.txt - This file contains a description of this DVD and may be viewed or printed by the user with any system program capable of opening an ASCII text file. 3. autorun.inf - This file is used by Windows systems and indicates which file to open and how to treat the contents of the DVD. The top-level directories are: 1.) Directory html/ - This directory contains the HTML files and supporting graphics to allow the user access to the DVD via any World Wide Web browser. This directory includes the following sub-directories: tile_htmls/ - contains the html page used for each tiles images and links. styles/ - contains style sheets used in the formatting of the HTML pages images/ - contains images used in the formatting of the HTML pages and contains one sub-directory: jpeg_tiles/ - contains the map tile images used on each tile html page. 2.) Directory data_files/ - This directory contains two subdirectories: be and fs each containg the raw data GeoTiffs, .xyz, and .las files for the bare earth and first surface data organized into sub-directories listed by their DOQQ position as follows: 29084eb8b/ 6. Directory Metadata/ - This directory contains relevant metadata files for each DOQQ in .xml and .txt formats. GETTING STARTED If the html file does not open automatically, open the 'start.html' file, at the top-level directory on this DVD, either by double-clicking on it or opening it directly from your browser menu. CONTACT John C. Brock U.S. Geological Survey 600 4th Street South St. Petersburg, Florida 33701 Ph: (727) 803-8747 x3088 FAX: (727) 803-2032 jbrock@usgs.gov REFERENCES Brock, J.C., and Sallenger, A., 2001, Airborne topographic lidar mapping for coastal science and resource management: U.S. Geological Survey Open File Report 01-46, p. 4 Brock, J.C., Wright, C.W., Nayegandhi, A., Clayton, T., Hansen, M., Longenecker, J., Gesch, D., and Crane, M., 2002, Initial results from a test of the NASA EAARL lidar in the Tampa Bay Region: Transactions of the Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies, v. 52, p. 89-98. Wright, C.W. and Brock, J.C., 2002, EAARL: A lidar for mapping shallow coral reefs and other coastal environments, in the Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Remote Sensing for Marine and Coastal Environments, Miami, May 20-22, 2002: Ann Arbor, MI, Veridian International Conferences, 1 computer optical disc.