Topography and Bathymetry in Alaska

Kirk Waters

Alaska Wave Climatologies Workshop

CSC Topography and Bathymetry Efforts

LiDAR Coverage

IFSAR Coverage

CSC Topography and Bathymetry Efforts

** Existing LiDAR beach coverage (blue) enlarged for visualization

JALBTCX Data On-line

Spring 2004 Fall 2004

500 meters landward topography1000 meters seaward bathymetryPlan to cover CONUS oceanfront where there is sand.

Lidar Topography in Shishmaref and Kivalina

• Data collected by Aerometric via NOAA/NGS contract• July and August 2004• Multiple collections done. Some two-meter resolution,

some one-meter resolution.• Classified for bare earth.• Will be available on-line• Approximately 750 million

points

Lidar Topography at Kivalina

NOS Alaska Hydro Surveys

NGDC holdings

T-Sheets and Shoreline

T-sheet zoom

Tundra

What else should we vectorize?

T-sheet Status

Image credit: Jon Swallow

Cape Edgecumbe: Lidar Topo/BathyNGS Data Fusion study

Experiment ObjectivesExperiment Objectives

• Collect Topographic and Bathymetric information safely and at same temporal scale

• Provide NOAA Ship Rainier with shoreline and near shore hydrographic data within days of acquisition

• Test a new concept of survey operations

Topo LIDAR

Bathy LIDAR

Topo/Bathy LIDAR Merged with NOAA Chart

Topo LIDAR MHW Shoreline

Hydrographic Soundings (fathoms)

Topographic Elevations (feet)

Summary

• The Coastal Services Center has coastal topography available for most of CONUS.

• The shoreline for Alaska has been vectorized from T-sheets where they exist.

• More information might be obtainable from the T-sheets if we can determine what is needed.

• Limited high-resolution topography exists, but there is data for Shishmaref and Kivalina

• Combining technologies can provide a seamless elevation dataset across the land-water interface.