Hurricane & Extreme Storm Impacts Home Scanning Airborne Laser Altimetry Coastal Change Mapping: Hurricane Dennis - 1999 Hurricane Bonnie - 1998 1997-98 El-Niño Contact: Abby Sallenger     Diagram showing the elliptical scan pattern of NASA's Airborne Topographic Mapper operated from a NOAA Twin Otter. In a cooperative research program, USGS, NASA and NOAA acquire laser altimetry data prior to and following extreme storms to quantify amounts of coastal change using NASA's Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM). The ATM was developed for climate change applications involving annual surveys of the Greenland ice sheet, but is also ideal for surveying the topography of beaches. The ATM can survey hundreds of kilometers of coast in a single day with data densities that cannot be achieved with traditional survey technologies. As the aircraft flies along the coast, a laser altimeter scans a several hundred meter swath of the earth's surface acquiring an estimate of ground elevation every few square meters. Change is quantified by comparing pre-storm to post-storm surveys. Traditional USGS topographic sheets do not have sufficient resolution to be useful for comparing coastal elevations. Airborne scanning laser surveys are providing unprecedented data to investigate the magnitude and causes of coastal changes that occur during severe storms. For more info, please contact: Abby Sallenger USGS St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center St. Petersburg, FL 33701 asallenger@usgs.gov Bill Krabill NASA Wallops Island Flight Facility Wallops Island, VA 23337 krabill@osb.wff.nasa.gov NOAA Coastal Services Center Charleston, SC 29405 csc@csc.noaa.gov Coastal and Marine Program > St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center > Research by Theme > Hazards > Hurricane and Extreme Storm Impact Studies > Coastal and Nearshore Lidar Mapping U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/lidar/index.html Address questions and comments to Trent Faust - Webmaster Updated March 10, 2010 @ 11:49 AM (THF)