Spokes: MEDIUM: SOUTH: Collaborative: Enhanced 3-D Mapping for Habitat, Biodiversity, and Flood Hazard Assessments of Coastal and Wetland Areas of the Southern US

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The risk to coastal populations and infrastructure from flooding due to sea level rise, severe storms, and river discharge will increase for U.S. southern states. The vision of this project is that communities occupying low-lying coastal areas of the southern US will be protected and develop in a sustainable manner through planning based on knowledge, conservation, and wise use of sensitive lands. Researchers from the University of South Florida's College of Marine Science and the School of Geosciences, Texas A&M University Corpus Christi, and Google Earth Engine are collaborating with the South Big Data Hub through this project to develop more accurate, ultra-high resolution topographic, land cover, and urban environment geospatial products. The project examines in detail areas that were directly impacted by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma in 2017, and identifies flood-prone areas across the region. The 3D maps show habitat diversity, needed to plan for conservation and development in these important ecosystems.This project will develop the improved topographic and land cover maps of the south States within 50 Km of the coast from Texas to Florida (an area 220,000 square Km). The maps will be constructed using a Big Data approach, using detailed historical airborne LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) data collected from airplanes merged with high spatial resolution (2 m pixel) multispectral commercial satellite imagery. The project will also include research into detailed 3D mapping of urban areas using Structure-from-Motion (SfM) methods; specifically the project will map portions of Houston/Corpus Christi in Texas, and Tampa/Saint Petersburg in Florida, using Kite Photography and light aircraft. The production of land cover maps and digital elevation models requires the fusion of very large amounts of disparate data and efficient, automated techniques. The project will develop the strategies to aggregate these data into useful products using Google Earth Engine and a High Performance Computing cluster. The project will distribute all products openly via NOAA's Digital Coastal portal.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.