Island Hopping: Collecting Topo-Bathy Lidar in CNMI

In the June 2021 edition of xyHt Magazine, Woolpert Geospatial Project Manager Megan Blaskovich talks about a recent project collecting topographic and bathymetric lidar to map the land, coastlines and waters of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands to benefit multiple federal agencies. The project was part of a task order under a partnership between NOAA Office for Coastal Management and USGS, with FEMA and NRCS also helping fund the project.

“The cost of acquiring and processing the data to map a remote area such as CNMI is very high in terms of mobilization and project development,” said Tim Saultz, USGS cartographer. “There was a requirement for both NOAA and USGS to have this data and, by developing this project together, we were able to pool our funds and get the project done. This is a continuing example of how well NOAA and USGS work together on all kinds of lidar projects.”

The PDF of this article is below, courtesy of xyHt, and the link to the article online can be found at https://www.xyht.com/lidarimaging/island-hopping/