Amar Nayegandhi
C. Wayne Wright
Jamie M. Bonisteel
John Brock
Kathryn E. L. Smith
2009
<p>These remotely sensed, geographically referenced elevation measurements of<span> </span><abbr title="Light Detection and Ranging">Lidar</abbr>-derived bare earth (<abbr title="Bare Earth">BE</abbr>) topography were produced as a collaborative effort between the<span> </span><abbr title="United States">U.S.</abbr><span> </span>Geological Survey (<abbr title="U.S. Geological Survey">USGS</abbr>), Florida Integrated Science Center (<abbr title="Florida Integrated Science Center">FISC</abbr>),<span> </span><abbr title="Saint">St.</abbr><span> </span>Petersburg,<span> </span><abbr title="Florida">FL</abbr>; the National Park Service (<abbr title="National Park Service">NPS</abbr>), Gulf Coast Network, Lafayette,<span> </span><abbr title="Louisiana">LA</abbr>; and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (<abbr title="National Aeronautics and Space Administration">NASA</abbr>), Wallops Flight Facility,<span> </span><abbr title="Virginia">VA</abbr>.</p><p>The purpose of this project is to provide highly detailed and accurate datasets of select barrier islands and peninsular regions of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, acquired on June 27-30, 2007. The datasets are made available for use as a management tool to research scientists and natural resource managers. An innovative airborne Lidar instrument originally developed at the<span> </span><abbr title="National Aeronautics and Space Administration">NASA</abbr><span> </span>Wallops Flight Facility, and known as the Experimental Advanced Airborne Research<span> </span><abbr title="Light Detection and Ranging">Lidar</abbr><span> </span>(<abbr title="Experimental Advanced Airborne Research Lidar">EAARL</abbr>), was used during data acquisition. The<span> </span><abbr title="Experimental Advanced Airborne Research Lidar">EAARL</abbr><span> </span>system is a raster-scanning, waveform-resolving, green-wavelength (532-nanometer)<span> </span><abbr title="Light Detection and Ranging">Lidar</abbr><span> </span>designed to map near-shore bathymetry, topography, and vegetation structure simultaneously. The<span> </span><abbr title="Experimental Advanced Airborne Research Lidar">EAARL</abbr><span> </span>sensor suite includes the raster-scanning, water-penetrating full-waveform adaptive<span> </span><abbr title="Light Detection and Ranging">Lidar</abbr>, a down-looking red-green-blue (<abbr title="Red, Green, Blue">RGB</abbr>) digital camera, a high-resolution multi-spectral color infrared (<abbr title="color infrared">CIR</abbr>) camera, two precision dual-frequency kinematic carrier-phase<span> </span><abbr title="Global Positioning System">GPS</abbr><span> </span>receivers, and an integrated miniature digital inertial measurement unit which provide for submeter georeferencing of each laser sample. The nominal<span> </span><abbr title="Experimental Advanced Airborne Research Lidar">EAARL</abbr><span> </span>platform is a twin-engine Cessna 310 aircraft, but the instrument may be deployed on a range of light aircraft. A single pilot, a<span> </span><abbr title="Light Detection and Ranging">Lidar</abbr><span> </span>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-environmental surveys.</p><p>Elevation measurements were collected over the survey area using the<span> </span><abbr title="Experimental Advanced Airborne Research Lidar">EAARL</abbr><span> </span>system and the resulting data were then processed using the Airborne Lidar Processing System (<abbr title="Airborne Lidar Processing System">ALPS</abbr>), a custom-built processing system developed in a<span> </span><abbr title="National Aeronautics and Space Administration">NASA</abbr>-<abbr title="U.S. Geological Survey">USGS</abbr><span> </span>collaboration.<span> </span><abbr title="Airborne Lidar Processing System">ALPS</abbr><span> </span>supports the exploration and processing of<span> </span><abbr title="Light Detection and Ranging">Lidar</abbr><span> </span>data in an interactive or batch mode. Modules for presurvey flight line definition, flight path plotting,<span> </span><abbr title="Light Detection and Ranging">Lidar</abbr><span> </span>raster and waveform investigation, and digital camera image playback have been developed. Processing algorithms have been developed to extract the range to the first and last significant return within each waveform.<span> </span><abbr title="Airborne Lidar Processing System">ALPS</abbr><span> </span>is used routinely to create maps that represent submerged or sub-aerial topography. Specialized filtering algorithms have been implemented to determine the 'bare earth' under vegetation from a point cloud of last return elevations.</p>
application/pdf
10.3133/ds400
en
U.S. Geological Survey
EAARL coastal topography — Northern Gulf of Mexico, 2007: Bare earth
reports