Using Airborne Hydrographic LiDAR To Support Mapping of California's Waters

A specialist team comprising academic, industry and government members is underway in a program that will ultimately lead to mapping of all 14,500 km2 of California's state waters from MHHW out to the three-nautical-mile boundary. The technical and scientific team is lead by California State Coastal Conservancy through a contract with California State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB), and includes principle investigators from the seafloor mapping Lab of CSUMB, Fugro Pelagos, Inc; the US geological survey's coastal and marine geology program; and moss landing marine Labs' center for habitat studies. The data acquisition program includes a seafloor mapping component that incorporates the latest multibeam echosounding and airborne LiDAR bathymetry technologies and a ground truth component that includes video transects and sampling. This presentation describes the comprehensive and high-resolution seafloor-mapping program, with a focus on integrating the airborne LIDAR component with the multibeam data. The airborne bathymetric LiDAR sensor is capable of providing beach and bluff topography, digital aerial imagery, nearshore bathymetry and nearshore seabed laser reflectance imagery. All LiDAR data will be integrated with deeper water acoustic data and ground truth data to ultimately support a three-tier level of data processing and analyses. The Tier 1 and Tier 2 products specified as requirements include a minimum of nine GIS data layers (ESRI compatible) with FGDC compliant metadata files. Two tier 3 interpretation example products are also being created: 1) an updated 1:100,000 essential fish habitat (EFH) interpretation map, and 2) a 1:24,000 geological quad map. The first portion of the California coast to be mapped extends from Punta Arena north of the golden gate, southward to Punta del Aflo Nuevo. This area was identified as a high priority during a workshop attended by statewide stakeholders. This ground-breaking program is funded by the California Ocean Protection Council through the California State Coastal Conservancy. The program manager was the Monterey Bay Sanctuary Foundation, working in collaboration with NOAA's National Marine Sanctuary Program. This presentation includes sections on the various technologies used, examples of results obtained to date, notes on planning the statewide mapping program, and a report on current program status. This major integrated mapping program along 1800 km of shoreline is establishing standards that can be applied to new regional coastal and offshore mapping for the management of marine resources.