Data
CHARTS Bathymetry and Topography
Provided by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
The National Coastal Mapping program is designed to provide high-resolution elevation and imagery data along U.S. shorelines on a recurring basis.
The program uses the Compact Hydrographic Airborne Rapid Total Survey (CHARTS) system that integrates topographic and bathymetric lidar sensors, a digital camera, and a hyperspectral scanner on a single remote sensing platform for use in coastal mapping and charting activities.
CHARTS includes the following data products:
- Bare-earth digital elevation models (DEMs) are rasterized topographic lidar elevations generated from returns classified as ground-level
- One-meter raster DEMs are rasterized topographic and bathymetric lidar elevations.
- ASCII XYZ files are 3-D position data sub-divided into a series of ASCII file products. Two files are created from the first and the last return of topographic lidar. The third file contains data collected by the hydrographic lidar sensor.
Data Specifications
- Area of Coverage: Over 6,500 kilometers (km) of shorelines on the Gulf Coast, Atlantic Coast, and in the Great Lakes, as well as connecting rivers and streams. Data coverage generally extends along the coastline, from the waterline inland 500 meters and offshore 1,000 meters, or to laser extinction.
- Date(s) Available: Range from 2004 to present
- Format: Bare-earth DEMs (GeoTIFF), one-meter raster files (GeoTIFF), and ASCII XYZ files
- Resolution: Bare-earth DEMs and one-meter raster DEMs have a one-meter pixel resolution
- Accuracy: The horizontal accuracy is better than +/- 0.75m. The vertical accuracy is better than +/- 0.20m
Example Bare Earth DEM (left) and one meter DEM (right).
