6-m resolution grid of multibeam bathymetry in western Massachusetts Bay map Quadrangle 3 (Q3_BATHY6M)

Data acquisition at sea
These multibeam data were collected with a Simrad EM1000 multibeam echo sounder mounted on the starboard pontoon of the Canadian Hydrographic Service Vessel Frederick G. Creed. The data were collected over four cruises carried out between the fall of 1994 and fall of 1998. Operation of the Simrad EM1000 was carried out by hydrographers of the Canadian Hydrographic Service. Data were collected along tracklines spaced 5-7 times the water depth apart at a speed of 10-14 knots. The frequency of the sonar was 95kHz. Sound velocity profiles were obtained and input into the Simrad processing system to correct for refraction. Navigation was by means of differential GPS.

Data processing and editing at sea
Processing of the data was carried out by USGS personnel with assistance from the Ocean Mapping Group at the University of New Brunswick (UNB), Canada. A suite of processing software (called swathed) developed by the Ocean Mapping Group (<www.omg.unb.ca/~jhc/SwathEd.html>) was used to process, edit, and archive the bathymetric soundings.
The processing and editing steps carried out on board the ship were:
1.. Demultiplex (unravel) the Simrad data files using RT to generate separate files for a given raw file (filename.raw_all) containing navigation (filename.nav), depth soundings (filename.merged), sidescan sonar backscatter values (filename.merged_ssdata), acquisition parameters (filename.param) sound velocity at the transducer (filename.sv_tdcr) and sound velocity profiler information (filename.svp).
Command line: RT -packdown -background -WRITE -em1000 -CnC -prefix RawFiles/ -suffix _raw.all -out ProcessedFiles/InputFilenamePrefix InputFilenamePrefix
2. Edit the navigation data on-screen using the SwathEd routine jview to remove undesirable points, including turns at the ends of survey lines. Jview also rejects stray GPS fixes outside of the survey area, as set by the operator.
Command line: jview -rejectnav -navedit filename.nav MassbayMap.sun_315
3. Edit the multibeam soundings for each trackline. SwathEd displays blocks of data across and along the trackline. Anomalous points were identified by comparison to other points and by an understanding of the sea floor geology and morphology. Anomalous soundings were removed.
Command line: swathed filename.merged
4. Map the bathymetric soundings from each processed data file onto a Mercator grid or DTM using weigh_grid with grid nodes spaced at 6 meters. The weigh_grid program creates a DTM by summing up the weighted contributions of all the provided data into the DTM. The weighted contributions only extend to a user defined region around the true location of the estimate (the cutoff). The weight of an individual point contribution decays away from the node location based on the order of the Butterworth (inverse weighting) filter (-power n), the width of the flat topped radius of the weighting function (-lambda n.n), and the absolute cutoff limit (-cutoff) that will be used for data points contributing to a node. In addition, each beam/other value can be pre-weighted if required to account for its reliability. A custom weight file for each beam is created by hand and input into the weigh_grid program using the -custom_weight option. Three files are created which are used by the weigh_grid program. An ".r4" file, which contains the grid node values in binary format, an "r4_weights" file, and an "r4_weight_depth" file. To do the summing of the weights, the .r4_weights file contains the sums of the weights for each data point contributing to the node, and the .r4_weight_depth file contains the sum of the weights x the depths. Naturally the solution is: weight_depth/weights for each node. For more information, visit the OMG website at <http://www.omg.unb.ca>.
First a blank binary grid and the weights and weight_depth files must be created:
Command line: make_blank -float gridFile
This creates all three files with a gridFile prefix.
Next, each individual data file (.merged suffix) is added to the grid using weigh_grid. The western Massachusetts Bay Quadrangles 1-3 were created with a grid node spacing of 6 meters, a cutoff radius of 12 meters, and an inner radius to the weighting function of 3 meters:
Command line: weigh_grid -omg -tide -coeffs -mindep -2 -maxdep -800 -beam_mask -beam_weight -custom_weight EM1000_Weights -butter -power 2 -cutoff 12 -lambda 3 gridFile filename.merged

Final data processing and editing
Processing was carried out to further edit and correct the data and to produce final grids and images of the data. Processing and editing steps included:
1. Correct errors in soundings due to sound refraction, caused by variations in sound velocity profile, using the SwathEd refraction tool. These artifacts can be recognized in a cross-swath profile of a relatively flat patch of sea floor. When viewing the swath data across a profile, the sea floor will appear to have a "frown" or "smile" when in fact the data should be flat across the profile. Insufficient and/or erroneous sound velocity information, which is usually due to widely spaced or non-existent velocity profiles within an area, results in an under or over-estimate of water depth which increases with distance from the center of the swath. For a discussion of how this effect can be recognized in a swath bathymetric data file, see < http://www.omg.unb.ca/AAAS/UNB_Seafloor_Mapping.html>.
2. Remove erroneous soundings that were not edited in the field using the SwathEd program.
3. Correct the bathymetric data to mean lower low water by subtracting the observed tide at Boston, Massachusetts from the edited bathymetric soundings. This correction assumes that the tidal phase and amplitude are the same as Boston across the survey area.
Mean Lower Low Water (MLLW) tidal information was obtained from the NOAA tide server using tide station 8443970 located at Boston, MA (42 degrees 21.3 minutes N, 71 degrees 3.1 minutes W) (http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/). The binary tide file used in the command line below was generated by reformatting the 6 minute tidal information from the NOAA site into a text file that contains Julian Day (DDD) , time (HH MM), and water level height(H.HH) in this format: DDD HH MM SS H.HH. This file was then converted to a binary tide file with:
Command line: binTide -year YYYY asciiTideFile BinaryTideFile
The program mergeTide brings the swath soundings to the MLLW vertical tidal datum:
Command line (tides): mergeTide -tide BinaryTideFile filename.merged Command line (navigation): mergeNav -ahead 5.379 -right 3.851 -below 4.244 filename (prefix only)
4. Create a 6-m grid of the bathymetric soundings for western Massachusetts Bay Quadrangles using the SwathEd routine weigh_grid.
Command line: weigh_grid -fresh_start -omg -tide -coeffs -mindep -2 -maxdep -800 -beam_mask -beam_weight -custom_weight EM1000_Weights -butter -power 2 -cutoff 12 -lambda 3 gridFile filename.merged
5. Convert binary bathymetric grid to ESRI ASCII raster format:
Command line: r4toASCII gridFile.r4
This creates a file called gridFile.asc.

An ESRI bathymetry grid was created by importing data from ASCII grid format into ESRI grid format.

Data shifted 1/2 grid cell to northwest (using the ArcMap/Data Management Tools/Projections and Transformations/Raster/Shift tool) to correct for an error identified in the SwathEd gridding algorithm in 2007.

Edits to the metadata were made to fix any errors that MP v 2.9.36 flagged. This is necessary to enable the metadata to be successfully harvested for various data catalogs. In some cases, this meant adding text "Information unavailable" or "Information unavailable from original metadata" for those required fields that were left blank. Other minor edits were probably performed (title, publisher, publication place, etc.). Attempted to modify http to https where appropriate. The source information was incomplete and had to be modified to meet the standard. The distribution format name was modified in an attempt to be more consistent with other metadata files of the same data format. The metadata date (but not the metadata creator) was edited to reflect the date of these changes. The metadata available from a harvester may supersede metadata bundled within a download file. Compare the metadata dates to determine which metadata file is most recent.

Added keywords section with USGS persistent identifier as theme keyword.