09-11, 13:30–14:00 (America/Chicago), Grand H
Learn how the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, together with multiple partners, are working to collect new high-resolution bathymetry to support classification and mapping of benthic habitats within the Great Lakes using open data formats and open source software.
Over the last few years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), together with multiple partners, have been working to collect new coastal and nearshore high-resolution bathymetry, multibeam backscatter, and lidar reflectance to support the classification and mapping of benthic habitats within the Great Lakes, funded through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. Bathymetric lidar and multibeam sonar are used to collect these foundational data, combined with underwater video and ancillary data, and are used to derive new and updated classification of the substrate, biotic, and geoform components using the Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard, or CMECS. This presentation will focus on providing an overview of the work completed to date; the importance of open data formats and open source software throughout the project's various workflows; and the potential opportunities for use of these new open data and information to inform benthic ecosystem restoration and protection efforts.
Open source software and open data formats are leveraged throughout each phase of the project. The first phase includes gap analysis, mission planning, data acquisition, dataset development, and data QA/QC. This phase leverages QGIS and HydrOffice to evaluate prior existing data coverage and assess new coverage from multiple sources including lidar LAS and LAZ files; multibeam sonar Bathymetric Attributed Grid (BAG) and GeoTIFF files; and other publicly available geospatial datasets to determine which areas have been collected or need to be recollected to meet mission requirements. Additionally, Bathymetry- and Reflectivity-based Estimator of Seafloor Segments (BRESS), GRASS and SAGA are used to perform geomorphometric analysis on the benthic DEM surfaces and used as inputs into the second phase that involves spatial modeling. The second phase includes spatial modeling and analysis to inform ground truthing and underwater video collection deployment efforts. This phase leverages R and RStudio for modeling benthic environment spatial relationships and analysis, while TATOR is used for underwater video annotation. The last phase is data distribution and discovery of all products involved in the project. Resulting data products are provided in multiple formats including LAS/LAZ, Entwine Point Tiles (EPT), Cloud Optimized Point Clouds (COPC), BAG, GeoTIFF/COG for rasters, KML/KMZ, and OpenGeoPackage for vectors to ensure ongoing project collaboration and coordination both internally and externally with partners.
