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Project Lead: Dave Zawada
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Lidar Collection: The NASA Experimental Advanced Airborne Research Lidar (EAARL) collected georectified digital aerial photographs and high-resolution lidar data over Assateague Island. The instrument uses a green laser and a raster scanning mechanism to acquire lidar data. Researchers set up a GPS base station to precisely locate the position of the aircraft and the data it collected.
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Lidar (Light Detection And Ranging) is a method of detecting distant objects and determining their position or other characteristics by analysis of pulsed laser light reflected from their surfaces. Lidar works on the same principle as RADAR (Radio Detection And Ranging), but lidar uses light waves emitted by a laser (rather than radio waves) to gather data. In its simplest form, lidar is used to determine the distance from the laser to a given object. More sophisticated lidar systems can provide information such as sea-surface roughness, wind velocity, and vegetation density.
Airborne Lidar is now being applied in coastal environments to produce accurate, high resolution, cost-efficient bathymetric and topographic datasets. The USGS Tampa Bay Study used the NASA EAARL (Experimental Airborne Advanced Research Lidar) to measure both the bathymetry and topography of important areas of the bay and its shoreline. The data was also used to develop hydrodynamic and sediment transport models.
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The above datasets are in GeoTIFF format.
To view them, you will need GIS software.
Commercial Software:
Global Mapper, ESRI ARC,
ERDAS IMAGINE, RSI ENVI.
Free Software: GRASS GIS
A GIF image of the GeoTIFF file,
with a background layer showing
the location of the lidar data, has been provided. |
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Topobathymetric Data for Tampa Bay, Florida, incorporating EAARL lidar data, available 05/08/2007
Please search the Tampa Bay Digital Library for additional products and data files.
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NASA Web site: Earth Observatory - Lidar: In the Wake of the Storm
USGS Sound Waves Article on EAARL Lidar - High-Resolution Map Merges Tampa Bay Bathymetry and Topography
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