2018 NOAA National Geodetic Survey Topobathy Lidar DEM (interpolated): Potomac River, Chesapeake Bay

These data were collected by Quantum Spatial, Inc. (QSI) for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Geodetic Survey (NGS), Remote Sensing Division (RSD), Coastal Mapping Program (CMP) using a Riegl VQ880G system. The Initial Award lidar data were acquired from 20180215 - 20180417 in eighteen missions. The dataset includes topobathy data in a LAS 1.2 format file with the following classification: unclassified (1), ground (2), noise (7), overlap default (19), overlap ground (20), overlap water column (21), water column (25), bathymetric bottom or submerged topography (26), submerged feature (29), submerged aquatic vegetation (30), temporal bathy bottom (31), and unclassified withheld/edge clip (129) in accordance with project specifications. The contracted project consists of approximately 309.125 square miles (197,840 acres) of the states of Virginia and Maryland covering the confluence of the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay. To ensure complete coverage and adequate point densities around survey area boundaries, the Area of Interest (AOI) was buffered by 100m. The full Initial Award project area including buffered area is approximately 478.151 square miles (306,017 acres). LAS files were compiled by 500 m x 500 m tiles. The final classified LiDAR data were then transformed to orthometric heights and used to create topobathymetric DEMs in IMG format with 1m pixel resolution.