The 88.7% accuracy achieved for detailed structure in NOAA's moderate-depth benthic habitat map is similar to the accuracies of recent NOAA shallow-water benthic habitat map for St. John (85.7%), as well as for the Florida Keys (86.2%), Palau (90.0%), and the Main Eight Hawaiian Islands (90.0%).
In 2005, the ship's positioning and orientation were determined by the Applanix POS/MV 320 V4, which is a GPS aided Inertial Motion Unit (IMU) providing measurements of roll, pitch and heading. The POS/ MV obtained its positions from two dual frequency Trimble Zephyr GPS antennae. An auxiliary Trimble DSM 132 DGPS system provided a RTCM differential data stream from the U.S. Coast Guard CORS at Port Isabel, Puerto Rico. For both years, CTD (conductivity, temperature and depth) measurements were taken approximately every 4 hours using a Seabird Electronics SBE-19 to correct for changing sound velocities in the water column.
GIS topologic quality was established by executing ArcGIS extension routines that check for: overlapping polygons, multipart polygons, sliver polygons and void polygons. Additionally checks for adjacent polygons with the same habitat attributes were completed. All errors were identified and corrected. This file is believed to be logically consistent.
Battista, T. A., and Lazar, J.V. (2005). MBES data acquisition & processing report: Project NF-05-05-USVI, NOAA Data Acquisition & Processing Report, NOS NCCOS CCMA (On-line).
On-line: http://ccma.nos.noaa.gov/products/biogeography/usvi_nps/pdf/NF-05-05_DAPR.pdf
Process_Date 2005 and 2009