Summary

Description

The Joint Airborne Lidar Bathymetry Technical Center of Expertise (JALBTCX) has performed a coastal survey along Lake Michigan in the summer of 2008. The data types collected include bathymetry and topographic lidar point data, true color imagery and hyperspectral imagery. The collection effort follows the coastline and extends 500m inland and 1000m offshore or to laser extinction, whichever comes first. Topographic lidar is collected with 200% coverage, yielding a nominal 1m x 1m post-spacing. Where water conditions permit, the bathymetry lidar data will have a nominal post spacing of 4m x 4m. The true color imagery will have a pixel size approximately 35cm and the hyperspectral imagery will be provided in 1m pixels containing 36 bands between 375 - 1050 nm with 19 nm bandwidth. The final data will be tied to horizontal positions, provided in decimal degrees of latitude and longitude, and are referenced to the North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83). Vertical positions are referenced to the NAD83 ellipsoid and provided in meters. The National Geodetic Survey's (NGS) GEOID03 model is used to transform the vertical positions from ellipsoid to orthometric heights referenced to the North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD88). Once converted to orthometric heights, the data are then converted to the International Great Lakes Datum of 1985 (IGLD85) using the VDatum program from NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).