Topobathymetric elevation models of the upper Delaware River, USA - Version 1 - 10km tiles

Publication Date

2020-09-14

Start Date

2012-11-26

End Date

2012-12-20

Young, J.A., 2020, Topobathymetric elevation models of the upper Delaware River, USA - Version 1 - 10km tiles: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P97031JU.

The goals of this project were to acquire bathymetric lidar over a large portion of the upper Delaware River, and to validate elevation models developed from this data prior to use as input for two-dimensional hydrodynamic models, and to compare and contrast bathymetric lidar data with other data including real-time kinematic GPS elevations from wading surveys, boat-mounted dual-beam sonar, and field collected habitat data including submerged aquatic vegetation type, substrate, and flow velocity. Several research efforts have been initiated to investigate ecological flow needs on the upper Delaware River. A Decision Support System (DSS) was developed by Maloney et al. (2015) using river bottom elevation data collected in the field with GPS over small river reaches. The purpose of this data collection was to test the capability for using lidar data as input to DSS applications to assist in managing water flows for aquatic habitat needs over the entire upper Delaware River. Recent work by others has assessed requirements for creating models of aquatic habitat suitability, as well as assessing flow management criteria through a combination of mesohabitat simulation and two-dimensional flow modeling using instream bathymetric data and topographic lidar at selected sites along the upper Delaware River. While this work has proven critical to understanding flow requirements within the upper Delaware River, the study areas to date have been limited, non-contiguous, and have required costly and intensive field work to gather data necessary for modeling. The goal of the data collection presented here is to expand these types of analyses over very large river extents using newly available remote sensing methods.

• Eastern Ecological Science Center
• USGS Data Release Products