Shallow water bathymetric and habitat mapping of coastal DoD sites using airborne hyperspectral and lidar imagery

This work uses airborne lidar and hyperspectral imagery to map the coastal and shallow water areas of San Clemente Island, California, and Marine Corps Base Hawaii (MCBH) (2017-2018). Lidar data at both sites were processed into contiguous land-to-sea digital elevation maps (DEMs), covering from nearshore upland areas to ~10m water depth. Hyperspectral images were processed into benthic habitat maps using a radiative transfer model and look-up-table approach to match aerial pixel spectra to a library of reference spectra. To improve benthic habitat classification accuracy, we constrained the water column depth in the radiative transfer model with the bathymetric lidar data. The hyperspectral images for San Clemente Island were collected using an airborne SPECIM AISA Eagle; for MCBH, we used lower-resolution, freely-available AVIRIS hyperspectral imagery. The hyperspectral data processing approach differed between sites to enable comparison of cost and performance trade-offs. Here we demonstrate the use of these digital products to evaluate military impacts on the environment.