21st International Conference of The Coastal Society
DEVELOPMENT OF A VERTICAL DATUM TRANSFORMATION TOOL AND A BATHYMETRIC/TOPOGRAPHIC DIGITAL ELEVATION MODEL FOR SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Edward P. Myers, NOAA/NOS Coast Survey Development Laboratory (CSDL) Jason Woolard, NOAA/NOS National Geodetic Survey Zhizhang Yang, Futron, Inc; NOAA/NOS CSDL Frank Aikman III, NOAA/NOS CSDL
Abstract
As one component of NOAA’s (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Coastal Storms Program, a vertical datum transformation tool (VDatum) and a bathymetric/topographic digital elevation model (DEM) are being developed for Southern California. This pilot effort of the Coastal Storms Program (CSP) is a multidisciplinary effort to increase community resiliency to coastal storms by providing an integrated set of tools, data and models. In addition to this VDatum/DEM project, other CSP efforts in this region include enhanced observing systems, an ecological assessment of storm impacts, coastal storm decision-support tools, and a precipitation atlas.
VDatum is a software tool developed by NOAA's National Ocean Service for the transformation of data between various vertical datums (including orthometric, ellipsoidal, and tidal datums). VDatum accurately translates geospatial data between 28 different vertical reference systems, allowing for the easy transformation of elevation data from one vertical datum to another. NOAA’s Coast Survey Development Laboratory, National Geodetic Survey and Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services are coordinating the development of a VDatum application for the Southern California region. The National Geodetic Survey will then use VDatum to transform the best available bathymetric and topographic data to a common vertical datum and reformat these data onto a quality-controlled, gridded DEM for Southern California. The DEM will be available on distributable media, and the VDatum transformation tool will be available as downloadable software from the web. These types of applications are increasingly used by coastal planners, floodplain managers, emergency managers, wetland and coastal habitat specialists.
Southern California VDatum
VDatum is a vertical datum transformation tool that is being developed on a regional basis as part of a plan for seamless, nationwide coverage of the coasts (Myers et al., 2007). Once developed for a region, the tool may be downloaded for transformation of elevation data among tidal, orthometric and ellipsoidal reference datums. The software interface is shown in Figure 1. A user can input a single location or a set of locations in a file. Pull-down menus enable selection
253 of input horizontal and vertical datums and the output vertical datum. Other options available include the selection of coordinates, units, and the choice of geoid model.
Figure 1. VDatum software interface.
Transformations available in VDatum are shown in Figure 2. The vertical datums are separated into three categories: three-dimensional (3D) reference frames, orthometric, and tidal datums. Within each of these categories, one primary vertical datum (shown in the dark blue ovals) is used for transformations between categories of datums. Thus, to go between a tidal datum and an orthometric datum, the data is first transformed to local mean sea level (LMSL) before conversion to the North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD 88). Similarly, conversions to/from a 3D datum are made through adjustments to NAD 83 (NSRS) before they may be transformed to NAVD 88. Two datasets are used to convert between classes of datums. A topography of the sea surface (TSS) is developed from benchmarked tide gauges to relate tidal datums to orthometric datums through an interpolated LMSL-NAVD 88 field, and a geoid model developed using gravimetric data is used to relate the orthometric datums (specifically, NAVD 88) to a 3D datum (NAD 83 (NSRS)). Within each vertical datum category, the following tools are used for transformations: (1) 3D reference datums are related to each other through the use of mathematical relationships called Helmert transformations calibrated through global networks of satellite and extra-terrestrial measurements, (2) conversions between NAVD 88 and the National Geodetic Vertical Datum of 1929 (NGVD 29) use the VERTCON model developed by NOAA’s National Geodetic Survey, and (3) relationships between LMSL and six other tidal datums are built from tide models developed for each VDatum region. These tidal datums (Gill and Schulz, 2001) include mean higher high water (MHHW), mean high water (MHW), mean tide level (MTL), diurnal tide level (DTL), mean lower water (MLW) and mean lower low water (MLLW).
254 Computing Tidal Datums and Topography of the Sea Surface for VDatum
For each region in which VDatum is developed, two sets of transformation fields must first be computed: the tidal datum relationships and the topography of the sea surface, both of which vary spatially. The remainder of the vertical datum transformations in VDatum are derived from nationwide products maintained and updated by NOAA’s National Geodetic Survey (NGS).
Orthometric 3D Datums Datums Tidal Datums
WGS 84 (G1150) Calibrated Helmert WGS 84 (G873) Transformations NGVD 29 WGS 84 (G730) Tide Models MHHW WGS 84 (orig.) ITRF2000 VERTCON MHW ITRF97 ITRF96 NAD83 (NSRS) NAVD 88 LMS MTL ITRF94 ITRF93 DTL ITRF92 ITRF91 MLW ITRF90 GEOID99, MLLW ITRF89 GEOID03 TSS ITRF88 (Topography of SIO/MIT 92 the Sea Surface) NEOS 90 PNEOS 90
Figure 2. Transformation “roadmap” between 3D, orthometric and tidal datums.
The tidal datum relationships for the Southern California VDatum were derived from a numerical model of tides in the region. The model used to compute these tidal patterns is ADCIRC (Luettich et al., 1992), a finite element model that solves the shallow water equations on unstructured triangular grids. The grid developed for the Southern California tide model is shown in Figure 3 and contains 181,420 nodes and 349,351 triangular elements. The grid extends from Morro Bay in the north to the northern tip of Mexico in the south.
The MHW shoreline is used as the coastline in the model grid to delineate land- water boundaries (Parker, 2002). The shoreline data were primarily based on the Extracted Vector Shoreline (EVS) product, developed by NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey (OCS). Bathymetric data used in this study were chosen hierarchically from three sources: (1) National Ocean Service soundings, (2) NOAA’s Electronic Navigational Charts (ENCs), and (3) manually digitized bathymetry from NOAA’s Raster Navigational Charts.
The grid in Figure 3 was used to simulate the tides over a 40 day period using the ADCIRC model. The open ocean boundary of the grid was forced with
255 seven astronomical tidal constituents (M2, S2, N2, K2, K1, P1, and O1) extracted from a larger regional model of tides in the Eastern North Pacific Ocean (Spargo, 2003). The simulations were made using 128 processors on the JET high performance computing system made available at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory.
(a)
(b)
Figure 3. Tide model grid, with close-up views (a) surrounding Santa Barbara and adjacent islands and (b) between San Diego and Santa Monica.
Modeled water levels at each node in the grid were recorded at six minute intervals. These time histories of water elevation were then analyzed to determine the regular tidal highs and lows for computing tidal datums for input to VDatum (MHHW, MHW, MTL, DTL, MLW, and MLLW). These model- computed tidal datums were compared with tidal datums derived from the National Water Level Observation Network (NWLON), maintained by NOAA’s Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services (CO-OPS). Differences between the model and data for each datum were spatially interpolated using TCARI (Tidal Constituent and Residual Interpolation) (Hess, 2002), which solves Laplace’s equation over the region using the shoreline as a boundary. These spatially varying fields of model-data differences were added back to the initial model results as correction fields. The corrected set of model results then match the tidal datums derived from observations.
The TSS is a spatially varying field of differences between LMSL and NAVD 88. Using NWLON water level gauges which have NGS benchmark observation data tied to NAVD 88, observed LMSL-NAVD 88 values were used along with the model results to generate a TSS field. The Surfer software was used for these computations, using the software’s minimum curvature algorithm with breaklines inserted to represent the influence of land.
The final TSS field and the corrected set of modeled tidal datums were transferred to a regularly-spaced marine grid at a resolution of approximately 0.1
256 nautical miles. These grids were provided to the VDatum software along with VERTCON conversions, geoid models (GEOID99 and GEOID03), and calibrated Helmert transformations.
Digital Elevation Model
The Southern California digital elevation model (DEM) will be developed using VDatum to reference available bathymetry and topography in the region to a common datum. The data will then be merged into a seamless DEM at a horizontal resolution of approximately 10 meters. Bathymetry will be assembled from NOS soundings available throughout the region. Topographic data will be selected from three sources: (1) Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) data collected in 2004, (2) Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (IFSAR) data collected between 2002-03, and (3) the National Elevation Dataset developed by the U.S. Geological Survey. The DEMs will be made publicly available on distributable media and also from a NOAA website.
References
Gill, S.K. and J.R. Schultz, 2001. Tidal Datums and Their Applications, NOAA Special Publication NOS CO-OPS 1, 2001. Hess, K., 2002. Spatial interpolation of tidal data in irregularly-shaped coastal regions by numerical solution of Laplace’s equation. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, 54(2), 175-192. Luettich, R.A., J.J. Westerink, and N.W. Scheffner, 1992. ADCIRC: an advanced three-dimensional circulation model of shelves, coasts and estuaries, Report 1: theory and methodology of ADCIRC-2DD1 and ADCIRC-3DL, Technical Report DRP-92-6, Dept. of the Army. Myers, E.P., K. Hess, Z. Zhang, J. Xu, A. Wong, D. Doyle, J. Woolard, S. White, B. Le, S. Gill, and G. Hovis, 2007. VDatum and Strategies for National Coverage, Proceedings of 2007 MTS/IEEE Oceans Conference, Vancouver, Canada. Parker, B. P., 2002. The integration of bathymetry, topography, and shoreline, and the vertical datum transformations behind it. International Hydrographic Review (3) 3. Spargo, E., J. Westerink, R. Luettich, and D. Mark, 2003. Developing a tidal constituent database for the Eastern North Pacific Ocean, in Proc. of the 8th Int. Conference on Estuarine and Coastal Modeling, Monterey, CA.
Edward P. Myers III NOAA/NOS Coast Survey Development Laboratory SSMC3, N/CS13, 1315 East-West Highway Silver Spring, MD 20910-3282 Ph (301) 713-2809 x107 Fax (301) 713-450
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