Data Management Plan

Watershed Sciences, Inc. (WS) collected Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data for the Department of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI) and the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF). The Areas of Interest (AOIs) cover portions of eight counties in northwest Oregon. The extent of requested LiDAR area totals ~1,549,015 acres; the extent of the LiDAR area delivered covers ~1,586,385 acres. The delivered acreage for the study area is greater than the original amount due to buffering of the original AOIs for flight planning optimization.

The LiDAR survey utilized a Leica ALS50 Phase II mounted in Cessna Caravan 208B and an Optech 3100 laser system mounted in a Cessna Caravan 208. The Leica ALS50 Phase II system was set to acquire ≥105,000 laser pulses per second (i.e. 105 kHz pulse rate) and flown at 900 meters above ground level (AGL), capturing a scan angle of ±14o from nadir1. The Optech 3100 system was set to acquire 71,000 laser pulses per second (i.e. 71 kHz pulse rate) and flown at 900 meters above ground level (AGL) capturing a scan angle of ±14 degrees from nadir. These settings are developed to yield points with an average native density of ≥8 points per square meter over terrestrial surfaces. The native pulse density is the number of pulses emitted by the LiDAR system. Some types of surfaces (i.e., dense vegetation or water) may return fewer pulses than the laser originally emitted. Therefore, the delivered density can be less than the native density and lightly variable according to distributions of terrain, land cover and water bodies.

The NOAA Office for Coastal Management (OCM) received 5,163 LAZ files from the Oregon Lidar Comission, with 4158 in Oregon State Plane North projection, and 1,005 in Oregon Lambert projection. These files were processed to the Data Access Viewer (DAV) and https. In addition to the lidar point data, bare earth digital elevation models (DEMs), at 3-foot resolution in ESRI GRID format, created from the lidar point data, are available for download at the link in the Related Items section of this metadata record. Please note that these products have not been reviewed by OCM, and any conclusions drawn from the analysis of this information are not the responsibility of NOAA or OCM.

Process Steps:

• Resolve kinematic corrections for aircraft position data using kinematic aircraft GPS and static ground GPS data. Software: Waypoint GPS v.8.10, Trimble Geomatics Office v.1.62
• Develop a smoothed best estimate of trajectory (SBET) file that blends the post-processed aircraft position with attitude data. Sensor head position and attitude are calculated throughout the survey. The SBET data are used extensively for laser point processing. Software: IPAS v.1.4
• Calculate laser point position by associating the SBET position to each laser point return time, scan angle, intensity, etc. Creates raw laser point cloud data for the entire survey in *.las (ASPRS v1.1) format. Software: ALS Post Processing Software
• Import raw laser points into manageable blocks (less than 500 MB) to perform manual relative accuracy calibration and filter for pits/birds. Ground points are then classified for individual flight lines (to be used for relative accuracy testing and calibration). Software: TerraScan v.9.001
• Using ground classified points per each flight line, the relative accuracy is tested. Automated line-to-line calibrations are then performed for system attitude parameters (pitch, roll, heading), mirror flex (scale) and GPS/IMU drift. Calibrations are performed on ground classified points from paired flight lines. Every flight line is used for relative accuracy calibration. Software: TerraMatch v.9.001
• Position and attitude data are imported. Resulting data are classified as ground and nonground points. Statistical absolute accuracy is assessed via direct comparisons of ground classified points to ground RTK survey data. Data are then converted to orthometric elevations (NAVD88) by applying a Geoid03 correction. Ground models are created as a triangulated surface and exported as ArcInfo ASCII grids at a 3-foot pixel resolution. Software: TerraScan v.9.001, ArcMap v9.3, TerraModeler v.9.001
• The NOAA Office for Coastal Management (OCM) received 5163 laz files from the Oregon Lidar Commission. The lidar data had elevation and intensity measurements. The data were in Oregon State Plane North and Oregon Lambert (NAD83 HARN) coordinates (Int Feet) and NAVD88 (Geoid 03) elevations in feet. The data were classified as: 1-Unclassified, 2-Ground. OCM processed all classifications of points to the Digital Coast Data Access Viewer (DAV). OCM performed the following processing on the data for Digital Coast storage and provisioning purposes: Internal OCM scripts were run on the laz files to convert from orthometric (NAVD88) elevations to ellipsoid elevations using the Geoid 03 model, to convert from projected (NAD83 HARN) coordinates in international feet to geographic coordinates, to convert vertical units from feet to meters, to assign the geokeys, to sort the data by gps time, and zip the data to database and to http.

Data is available online for custom downloads

Data is backed up to tape and to cloud storage.