Gridded bathymetry (40 m cell size) of the slope environment of Swains Island, American Samoa. Almost complete bottom coverage was achieved in depths between 7 and 4800 m. The multibeam data are from the Simrad EM300 system aboard the NOAA Ship Hi'ialakai, and the Reson 8101ER system aboard the R/V AHI and were collected from 10th - 13th February 2006.
The data were collected in support of Coral Reef Conservation Program goals to map all shallow (0-30 m) coral reefs in US Pacific waters and priority moderate (> 30 m) depth areas by 2009. The data are being used to provide bathymetric and backscatter data for previously unmapped areas; in support of ecosystem management requirements for benthic habitat mapping and location of Essential Fish Habitat; and to study the geologic features of the area.
Data were collected aboard the NOAA Ship Hiialakai, a 218' United States National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration research ship. The NOAA Ship Hiialakai's survey sensors include a 30 kHz Simrad EM300 sonar and a 300 kHz Simrad EM3002D sonar, which provide bathymetry and imagery data, a TSS/Applanix POS/MV Model 320, which measures position, velocity, attitude and heading, and a Seabird SBE 9/11 plus CTD used to measure sound velocity profiles. Sensor configuration for the Hi'ialakai for cruise HI-06-02 is documented in the cruise/multibeam metadata file HI0602_MB_Metadata.txt. Data were also collected aboard the R/V AHI (Acoustic Habitat Investigator), a 25' survey launch owned and operated by the NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center in Honolulu, HI. The R/V AHI's survey sensors include a 240 kHz RESON 8101-ER sonar providing bathymetry and imagery data, a TSS/Applanix POS/MV Model 320 which measures position, velocity, attitude and heading, and a Seabird SBE 19 CTD used to measure sound velocity profiles. Sensor configuration for the AHI for cruise AHI-06-02 is documented in the cruise/multibeam metadata file AHI0602_MB_Metadata.txt.
ground condition
These data are not to be used for navigation purposes. Please acknowledge the NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Division, Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center and the Pacific Islands Benthic Habitat Mapping Center, School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawaii as the sources of this information.
NOAA IRC
NMFS/PIFSC/CRED
1845 WASP Blvd., Building 176
e-mail preferred
http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/pibhmc/amsamoa_images/Swains_40m_445.jpg
Benthic Habitat Mapping Group, Coral Reef Ecosystem Division (CRED), Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC), NOAA
Data are collected for resource management and research purposes and are tested for internal consistency; however, no effort is made to compare these data to external references or to other published data.
These data are believed to be logically consistent though no tests were performed
Complete
Horizontal positioning system: GPS C/A Horizontal position accuracy: 25 meters
Range resolution of sonar: varies with depth Raw sounding resolution: varies with depth Vertical accuracy of gridded product ~ 1% of water depth
Multibeam swath files are acquired in the Generic Sensor Format (GSF) and are edited on a swath by swath basis using SAIC's SABER editing software. The edited swath files are then combined into a Pure File Magic (PFM) format in SABER and area based editing is performed. The edited PFM is then exported as X,Y,Z. The resulting X,Y,Z data are then gridded using nearneighbor, a Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) algorithm that reads arbitrarily located X,Y,Z and assigns an average value to each grid node that has one or more points within a 200 m radius centered on the node and outputs a netCDF grid file. GMT is an open source collection of tools for manipulating geographic data sets. Grid nodes with more than one value are set to the average value and unconstrained nodes are set to NaN. Finally, the netCDF grid is clipped at a depth that minimizes data gaps for the specified grid cell size and then converted to an ArcGIS ASCII file format using LINUX/UNIX commands in combination with GMT. Additional information about GMT can be found at: www.soest.hawaii.edu/gmt and additional information about the multibeam data processing is recorded in the cruise metadata report AHI0602_MB_Metadata.txt and AHI0602_MB_Metadata.txt
Depth values are real values based on the average of the soundings that fell within the extracted grid cells. The number of soundings per grid cell range from >1000 soundings in shallow depths to as few as 20 soundings in deeper areas. A total error budget for this survey has not been developed. Therefore, the accuracy of depth measurements should be considered to be within 1 per cent of water depth.
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These data are not to be used for navigational purposes. NOAA makes no warranty regarding these data, expressed or implied, nor does the fact of distribution constitute such a warranty. NOAA cannot assume liability for any damages caused by any errors or omissions in these data, nor as a result of the failure of these data to function on a particular system.
Arc ASCII can be converted to Arc Raster using ArcToolbox Conversion Tools (ASCIItoRaster).
