There are over 400 monuments along South Carolina's coast at which these teams take measurements. This report includes beach profiles at the monuments and also notes general topographic change. Beach Survey Team Sample Profile Using traditional beach survey methods, data are collected in a transect seaward from a benchmark. Furthermore, the data set collected is extremely dense, accounting for topographic changes along the entire beach rather than just along transect lines. Currently, testing is being conducted to determine the accuracy of this new method of collecting topographic data relative to traditional survey methods.
Grids are geographic data models representing information as an array of equally sized square cells.
Each grid cell has a value that corresponds to the feature or characteristic at that site, such as a soil type, vegetation class, or in this case, elevation. Values of the cell can be stored in a database file that is connected to its geographic x, y location. Using contours alone, the features of the beachfront cannot be easily detected. To alleviate this problem, over 90 aerial photographs of the natural dune line were scanned and georeferenced. Using ArcView, the contours could be overlaid on the aerial photographs.