In the winter of 1991, the Coastal Change Analysis Program (C-CAP) at NOAA's Office for Coastal Management and the State of Florida commissioned the National Geodetic Survey to acquire conventional color metric aerial photography of Florida Bay. This effort was suitable for interpretation of photic benthic habitats and at a scale of 1:48,000. Additional photography was acquired by the National Geodetic Survey in 1995 to cover areas of the bay that were not interpretable due to turbidity and glare during the original mission. The imagery was collected according to stringent parameters detailed in the C-CAP protocol. The original photographic diapositives were interpreted by two ecologists familiar with the local environment, using Bausch and Lomb zoom stereoscopes and Richards light tables. The boundaries of each unique signature were delineated on acetate overlays and assigned one of 20 habitat classes. Only the central portion of each frame was interpreted to minimize the effects of sun glint. An ecologist at Florida's Marine Research Institute (now called the Fish and Wildlife Research Institute) conducted thematic quality assurance and control.

Following photo interpretation, NOAA's Office for Coastal Management staff scanned the aerial photos, with the interpreted acetate overlays attached, using a photogrammetric-quality scanner at a pixel resolution of approximately 2 meters. The resulting image file was rectified, and ground control points were selected from features common to digital orthophotoquads of Florida Bay. In 1999, the final edits and quality control of the habitat delineations were completed. The coverage and shoreline were edgematched to the Benthic Habitats of the Florida Keys Atlas to complete the coverage, as the dates of photography, methodology, and classification system used were the same.

The layers available within the data download include biotic, geoform, and substrate.

Partners: State of Florida and National Geodetic Survey