Data Management Plan (Deprecated)

The project vendor, Woolpert, Inc., acquired highly accurate Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) elevation data for the Arrowhead Region in Northeast Minnesota in Spring 2011. The data cover Carlton, Cook, Lake and St. Louis counties, part of Itasca County, and Voyageurs National Park in Koochiching County. LiDAR data are in the UTM Zone 15 coordinate system, NAD83 NAVD88 Geoid09 meters. The tiling scheme is 16th USGS 1:24,000 quadrangle tiles.

The vendor delivered the data to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in several formats:

1) One-meter digital elevation model

2) Edge-of-water breaklines

3) Classified LAS formatted point cloud data

DNR staff created two additional products: two-foot contours and building outlines.

The original metadata record was created at the Minnesota Geospatial Information Office by combining information supplied by Woolpert and DNR.

This metadata supports the data entry in the NOAA Digital Coast Data Access Viewer (DAV). For this data set, the DAV is leveraging the Entwine Point Tiles (EPT) hosted by USGS on Amazon Web Services.

Lineage Statement:
The Arrowhead, MN lidar was ingested into the Data Access Viewer for custom product generation by leveraging USGS hosted Entwine Point Tiles.

Process Steps:

• Vendor Processing Steps: Woolpert Inc. was selected to provide LiDAR services for CFMS Contract Number B41672 T-Number 1029G Work Order #3 - Minnesota Arrowhead Region. Using Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) systems, 390 flight lines of high density data, at a nominal pulse spacing (NPS) of 1.0 meter for acquisition areas 1 and 2 while the remaining areas were collected and processed to meet a Nominal Post Spacing (NPS) of 1.5 meter, were collected over Minnesota counties of Carlton, Cook, Lake, St. Louis, and Itasca Counties and that portion of Koochiching County that comprises Voyageurs National Park (approximately 12,433 square miles). Multiple returns were recorded for each laser pulse along with an intensity value for each return. A total of 55 missions were flown over a 20 day period: May 03, 2011 through June 02, 2011. A minimum of two airborne global positioning system (GPS) base stations were used in support of the LiDAR data acquisition. 87 ground control points were surveyed through static methods. The geoid used to reduce satellite derived elevations to orthometric heights was Geoid09. All data for the task order is referenced to UTM 15N, NAD83, NAVD88, in meters. Airborne GPS data was differentially processed and integrated with the post processed IMU data to derive a smoothed best estimate of trajectory (SBET). The SBET was used to reduce the LiDAR slant range measurements to a raw reflective surface for each flight line. The coverage was classified to extract a bare earth digital elevation model (DEM) and separate last returns. In addition to the LAS deliverables, one layer of coverage were delivered in the ArcINFO ArcGrid binary format: bare-earth. LAS data were classified using the following standard ASPRS categories: 0 Unclassified, 1 Unknown, 2 Bare Earth, 3 Low Vegetation (less than 1.1 m), 4 Medium Vegetation (1.11 - 2.4 m), 5 High Vegetation (2.41 - 200 m), 6 Buildings, 7 Noise, 8 Model Keypoint, 9 Water, 14 Bridge Decks, 17 Overlap System Parameters for 1.0 NPs: Post Spacing (Minimum): 3.28 ft / 1.0 m AGL (Above Ground Level) average flying height: 6,500 ft / 1,981.2 m MSL (Mean Sea Level) average flying height: 7,700 ft / 2,247 m Average Ground Speed: 130 knots / 149 mph Field of View (full): 40 degrees Pulse Rate: 115.6 kHz Scan Rate: 41.8 Hz Side Lap (Minimum): 25% System Parameters for 1.5 NPs: Post Spacing (Minimum): 4.92 ft / 1.5 m AGL (Above Ground Level) average flying height: 7,800 ft / 2,377.4 m MSL (Mean Sea Level) average flying height: 8,900 ft / 2712.7 m Average Ground Speed: 150 knots / 172.6 mph Field of View (full): 40 degrees Pulse Rate: 99 kHz Scan Rate: 38 Hz Side Lap (Minimum): 25% Swath Width : variable due to multiple flying heights Distance Between Flight Lines: variable due to multiple flying heights Data is tiled by 1/16 1:24,000-scale quadrangle.
• Additional Products Generated by Minnesota DNR staff: These products are in the geodatabase for each of the tiles: 1. Two-foot contours were created by resampling the 1-meter DEM to 3 meters, then smoothing the 3-meter grid using a neighborhood average routine, and then creating contours from this surface using standard ArcGIS processing tools. 2. Building outlines were created by extracting from the LAS files those points with Classification 6 (buildings), then grouping those points within 3 meters of each other into a single cluster and then creating an outline around those points. This was done using standard ArcMap tools. 3. Hillshades were created from the one- and three-meter DEMs using standard ArcMap tools. Azimuth value = 215, Altitude = 45, Z-Factor = 1
• Original point clouds in LAS/LAZ format were restructured as Entwine Point Tiles and stored on Amazon Web Services. The data were reprojected horizontally to WGS84 web mercator (EPSG 3857) and no changes were made to the vertical (NAVD88 GEOID09 meters).
• 2022-12-02 00:00:00 - The NOAA Office for Coastal Management (OCM) created references to the Entwine Point Tiles (EPT) that were ingested into the NOAA Digital Coast Data Access Viewer (DAV). No changes were made to the data. The DAV will access the point cloud as it resides on Amazon Web Services (AWS) under the usgs-lidar-public container. These are the AWS URLs being accessed: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/usgs-lidar-public/USGS_LPC_MN_Arrowhead_B1_2011_LAS_2016/ept.json https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/usgs-lidar-public/USGS_LPC_MN_Arrowhead_B2_2011_LAS_2016/ept.json https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/usgs-lidar-public/USGS_LPC_MN_Arrowhead_B3_2011_LAS_2016/ept.json https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/usgs-lidar-public/USGS_LPC_MN_Arrowhead_B4_2011_LAS_2016/ept.json https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/usgs-lidar-public/USGS_LPC_MN_Arrowhead_B5_2011_LAS_2016/ept.json

Data is available online for bulk and custom downloads.

Data is backed up to tape and to cloud storage.