EAARL Special Project

The objective of this project was to evaluate and utilize the Experimental Advanced Airborne Research Lidar (EAARL) sensor for NOAA and United States Geological Survey (USGS) mapping programs. EAARL data was acquired on a NOAA Twin Otter aircraft to evaluate the capability to serve a variety of program needs and projects including the update ofcoastal shallow water bathymetry and topography, ecosystem protection, change analysis, benthic habitat information, post-hurricane damage assessment, and updated national shoreline. .

The EAARL instrument is unique in its design. Using a single green wavelength laser and a narrow field of view EAARL combines shallow bathymetric and topographic mapping capabilities in a single system. EAARL measures the bottom topography relative to an ellipsoid rather than a water depth tide corrected to Mean Lower Low Water (MLLW). Recent developments in vertical datum transformations, such as the VDatum tool now allow for data referenced to an ellipsoid to be transformed to a known tidal datum (ie MLLW, MHW) using VDatum. This research will apply this methodology to lidar data acquired using the EAARL instrument.