georeferenced bathymetry

Georeferencing is attaching world-coordinates to a dataset. A necessary evil for merging data; e.g. satellite images with LIDAR scans. I found this most useful for planning field experiments. The LIDAR data reveals where the bathymetry is physically interesting or uniform, and the satellite images provide a world-reference to locate ourselves. We could plan out the instrument locations ahead of time and upload to a GPS handset. It is terribly difficult to find an underwater instrument if you don't know exactly where it is.

The Hawaii Coastal Geology Group has an excellent website and easily accessed data.

The code for these figures creates 3D objects that can be rotated, zoomed, etc.

The following is Ipan reef, Guam. Just next to Jeff's Pirates Cove ;)

Merging {2,3}-D data requires a fixed grid of some sort, which immediately brings to task questions on optimal interpolation, zero-filling, etc. The following figures show the sparsity/gaps in the LIDAR scan, and the distance to nearest-neighbor. This is the cutoff for more advanced gridding methods.