Coastal Zone Mapping and Imaging Lidar

The Coastal Zone Mapping and Imaging Lidar (CZMIL) is a new sensor development effort within the National Coastal Mapping Program (NCMP). During the past 4 years, the NCMP has produced high-quality, high-resolution information products from airborne lidar bathymetry, topography and accompanying RGB and hyperspectral imagery data: 1-m bathy/topo rasters, 1-m bare earth rasters, 20-cm RGB image mosaics, 1-m, 36-band hyperspectral image mosaics, 1-m landcover classifications, 2-m bottom reflectance images and shoreline vectors. All of these products have been generated from data collected by airborne lidar bathymeters designed to measure primarily water depth, and using available COTS software packages in a processing flow that proved cumbersome by challenging the throughput of the programs, or by applying them in a non-standard manner to achieve desired results.