10 meter bathymetric contours of the Gulf of the Farallones region (10mCONTOUR)

Land elevations within the gridded dataset come from the United States Geological Survey/ National Image Mapping Agency (USGS/NIMA) 1:250,000 or 1 degree DEMs of the states. A description of the USGS/NIMA DEMs and how they were derived can be accessed on the World Wide Web at http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/glis/hyper/guide/1_dgr_dem (this online link is no longer valid). Our focus, however, is on the bathymetric soundings that are used in constructing the offshore regions of the grids. Soundings for each volume of the Coastal Relief model series are compiled from hydrographic surveys conducted by the National Ocean Service (NOS) and from various academic institutions. The surveys were carried out using a variety of sounding methods including SeaBeam 16-beam, 12-kHz swath mapping system (6000- >3000m operating water depths), General Instruments 17-beam, 36-kHz Hydrochart II swath mapping system (5-150m operating water depths), single-beam echosounder (e.g., 3.5 kHz narrow 2 degree beam), and lead-line sounding method. These latter surveys date as far back as the late 1800's. A wide range of navigation methods are also associated with the surveys. Visual navigation is based on three-point sextant fixes, theodolite intersections, and celestial fixes. Electronic navigation involves short to long range positioning systems that run the gamut from Loran-C (0.25 - 5 nm accuracy) to differential GPS (1 m accuracy). Despite the varying sounding and navigation techniques upon which they are based, all of the NOS soundings used in constructing the Coastal Relief Model meet rigorous standards for accuracy. The same standards are employed by the International Hydrographic Office and have remained relatively consistent since the 1800's. The vertical accuracy of the soundings is 0.3 m in 0 - 20 m of water, 1.0 m in 20 - 100 m of water, and 1% of the water depth in 100 m of water. The horizontal accuracy of the soundings is within a radius of 1.5 mm of the sounding location at the scale at which the soundings are recorded. NOS surveys are plotted at map scales that range from 1:10,000 for harbors and channels to 1:50,000 for open ocean surveys, with 1:20,000 being the most commonly used scale. The horizontal accuracy of the soundings is generally 30 m, but it can vary from as fine as 15 m in ports and estuaries to as coarse as 75 m in the offshore areas. Differential GPS has improved this level of accuracy considerably for the most recent survey data. While the NOS soundings collected since 1965 have been recorded digitally, those collected prior to this time were recorded manually and then used to make hand-drawn bathymetric maps. Approximately 1,550 of these hand-drawn bathymetric maps have been digitized and assimilated into the NOS Hydrographic Database and, subsequently, were used in constructing the many volumes of the gridded dataset.