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EAARL Submarine Topography-Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary

Metadata Updated: July 6, 2024

Lidar is a remote sensing technique that uses laser light to detect, range, or identify remote objects based on light reflected by the object or emitted through its subsequent fluorescence. Airborne ranging Lidar is now being applied in coastal environments to produce accurate, cost-efficient elevation datasets with high spatial density. The USGS in cooperation with NASA, NOAA, and NPS is using airborne Lidar to measure the submerged topography of the northern Florida reef tract; secondarily, the data will be assessed for its potential in terms of benthic characterization. Elevation measurements were collected over part of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (FKNMS) using the NASA Experimental Advanced Airborne Research Lidar (EAARL), a pulsed laser ranging system mounted onboard an aircraft to measure subaerial and submarine topography. The system uses a high frequency laser beam directed at the earth's surface through an opening in the bottom of the aircraft's fuselage. The laser system records the time difference between emission of the laser beam and the reception of the reflected laser signal in the aircraft. The EAARL system, developed by the NASA Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) in Virginia, measures ground elevation with a vertical resolution of roughly 15 centimeters. A sampling rate of up to 3 kHz results in an extremely dense spatial elevation data set. 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% overlap between flightlines, resulting in about one laser sounding per square meter. The data were processed by the USGS FISC (St. Petersburg office) 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. For more information on Lidar science and the Experimental Advanced Airborne Research Lidar (EAARL) system and surveys, see http://ngom.usgs.gov/dsp/overview/index.php and http://ngom.usgs.gov/dsp/tech/eaarl/index.php .

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date June 1, 2023
Metadata Updated Date July 6, 2024

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI EDI

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date June 1, 2023
Metadata Updated Date July 6, 2024
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
@Id http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/94736d4459eeba9ae978891a1fb26d3b
Identifier USGS:db0195a0-794c-4617-91bb-c7504d0242d0
Data Last Modified 20211109
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://datainventory.doi.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 0fa6ac3b-3db0-4100-bd50-2ba1f3d43cec
Harvest Source Id 52bfcc16-6e15-478f-809a-b1bc76f1aeda
Harvest Source Title DOI EDI
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -80.455046,24.963277,-80.235732,25.19728
Publisher Hierarchy White House > U.S. Department of the Interior > U.S. Geological Survey
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash c320195abd81b95af681550283779150721c06ca7a8520fa69875f9645b43ce3
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -80.455046, 24.963277, -80.455046, 25.19728, -80.235732, 25.19728, -80.235732, 24.963277, -80.455046, 24.963277}

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