Topographic point cloud for the intertidal zone at Post Point, Bellingham Bay, WA, 2019-06-06

This portion of the data release presents topographic point clouds of the intertidal zone at Post Point, Bellingham Bay, WA. The point clouds were derived from structure-from-motion (SfM) processing of aerial imagery collected with an unmanned aerial system (UAS) on 2019-06-06. Two point clouds are presented with different resolutions: one point cloud (PostPoint_2019-06-06_pointcloud.zip) covers the entire survey area and has 145,653,2221 points with an average point density of 1,057 points per-square meter; the other point cloud (PostPointHighRes_2019-06-06_pointcloud.zip) has 139,427,055 points with an average point density of 3,487 points per-square meter and was derived from a lower-altitude flight covering an inset area within the main survey area. The point clouds are tiled to reduce individual files sizes and grouped within zip files for downloading. Each point in the point clouds contains an explicit horizontal and vertical coordinate, color, intensity, and classification. Water portions of the point cloud were classified using a polygon digitized from the orthomosaic imagery derived from these surveys (also available in this data release). No other classifications were performed. The raw imagery used to create these point clouds was acquired using a UAS fitted with a Ricoh GR II digital camera featuring a global shutter. The UAS was flown on pre-programmed autonomous flight lines spaced to provide approximately 70 percent overlap between images from adjacent lines. The camera was triggered at 1 Hz using a built-in intervalometer. For the main survey area point cloud, the UAS was flown at an approximate altitude of 70 meters above ground level (AGL), resulting in a nominal ground-sample-distance (GSD) of 1.8 centimeters per pixel. For the higher-resolution point cloud, the UAS was flown at an approximate altitude of 35 meters (AGL), resulting in a nominal ground-sample-distance (GSD) of 0.9 centimeters per pixel. The raw imagery was geotagged using positions from the UAS onboard single-frequency autonomous GPS. Nineteen temporary ground control points (GCPs) were distributed throughout each survey area to establish survey control. The GCPs consisted of a combination of small square tarps with black-and-white cross patterns and "X" marks placed on the ground using temporary chalk. The GCP positions were measured using post-processed kinematic (PPK) GPS, using corrections from a GPS base station located approximately 5 kilometers from the study area. The point clouds are formatted in LAZ format (LAS 1.2 specification).

Tags: aerial-and-satellite-photography, aerial-photography, altimetry, bathymetry-and-elevation, bellingham, bellingham-bay, chmrp, coastal-and-marine-hazards-and-resources-program, coastal-processes, elevation, fairhaven, geomorphology, geoscientificinformation, geospatial-datasets, image-mosaics, orthophotography, pacific-coastal-and-marine-science-center, pcmsc, photography, post-point, puget-sound, remote-sensing, salish-sea, sfm, south-bellingham, state-of-washington, structure-from-motion, topographic-maps, topography, u-s-geological-survey, uas, unmanned-aerial-system, usgs, usgs-5ef522a582ced62aaae6a015, whatcom-county
Organization: Department of the Interior