ArcInfo Grid of the 30 meter pixel Composite Bathymetry of Boston Harbor and Approaches (BH_30MBATH, UTM 19, WGS84)

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Frequently anticipated questions:

What does this data set describe?

Title:
ArcInfo Grid of the 30 meter pixel Composite Bathymetry of Boston Harbor and Approaches (BH_30MBATH, UTM 19, WGS84)
Abstract:
These data are high-resolution bathymetric measurements of the seafloor from Boston Harbor and the harbor approaches, Massachusetts. Approximately 170 km square of sidescan sonar and bathymetric data were collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Ship Whiting in 2000 and 2001 and reprocessed and gridded by the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management (CZM) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
  1. How might this data set be cited?
    Ackerman, Seth, 2006, ArcInfo Grid of the 30 meter pixel Composite Bathymetry of Boston Harbor and Approaches (BH_30MBATH, UTM 19, WGS84): Open-File Report 2006-1008, U.S. Geological Survey, Coastal and Marine Geology Program, Woods Hole Coastal and Marine Science Center, Woods Hole, MA.

    Online Links:

    This is part of the following larger work.

    Ackerman, S.D., Butman, B., Barnhardt, W.A., Danforth, W.W., and Crocker, J.M., 2006, High-Resolution Geologic Mapping of the Inner Continental Shelf: Boston Harbor and Approaches, Massachusetts: Open-File Report 2006-1008, U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, VA.

    Online Links:

    Other_Citation_Details: 1 DVD-ROM
  2. What geographic area does the data set cover?
    West_Bounding_Coordinate: -71.055927
    East_Bounding_Coordinate: -70.814597
    North_Bounding_Coordinate: 42.438340
    South_Bounding_Coordinate: 42.256948
  3. What does it look like?
  4. Does the data set describe conditions during a particular time period?
    Beginning_Date: 19-Sep-2000
    Ending_Date: 30-Oct-2001
    Currentness_Reference:
    ground condition
  5. What is the general form of this data set?
    Geospatial_Data_Presentation_Form: raster digital data
  6. How does the data set represent geographic features?
    1. How are geographic features stored in the data set?
      This is a Raster data set. It contains the following raster data types:
      • Dimensions 657 x 648 x 1, type Grid Cell
    2. What coordinate system is used to represent geographic features?
      Grid_Coordinate_System_Name: Universal Transverse Mercator
      Universal_Transverse_Mercator:
      UTM_Zone_Number: 19
      Transverse_Mercator:
      Scale_Factor_at_Central_Meridian: 0.999600
      Longitude_of_Central_Meridian: -69.000000
      Latitude_of_Projection_Origin: 0.000000
      False_Easting: 500000.000000
      False_Northing: 0.000000
      Planar coordinates are encoded using row and column
      Abscissae (x-coordinates) are specified to the nearest 30.000000
      Ordinates (y-coordinates) are specified to the nearest 30.000000
      Planar coordinates are specified in meters
      The horizontal datum used is D_WGS_1984.
      The ellipsoid used is WGS_1984.
      The semi-major axis of the ellipsoid used is 6378137.000000.
      The flattening of the ellipsoid used is 1/298.257224.
      Vertical_Coordinate_System_Definition:
      Depth_System_Definition:
      Depth_Datum_Name: Mean lower low water
      Depth_Resolution: 9999
      Depth_Distance_Units: meters
      Depth_Encoding_Method: Attribute values
  7. How does the data set describe geographic features?
    Entity_and_Attribute_Overview: The grid cell values represent depth.
    Entity_and_Attribute_Detail_Citation: U.S. Geological Survey

Who produced the data set?

  1. Who are the originators of the data set? (may include formal authors, digital compilers, and editors)
    • Seth Ackerman
  2. Who also contributed to the data set?
  3. To whom should users address questions about the data?
    Seth Ackerman
    Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management
    Geologist
    c/o U.S. Geological Survey
    Woods Hole, MA
    USA

    (508) 548-8700 x2315 (voice)
    (508) 457-2310 (FAX)
    seth.ackerman@state.ma.us

Why was the data set created?

These data were collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Ocean Service (NOS) branch as part of their periodic hydrographic mapping for nautical charting. The raw datasets were provided by NOAA to the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management (CZM) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in Woods Hole, MA as part of a cooperative agreement to provide high resolution bathymetry and backscatter intensity maps and digital GIS information for resource management, scientific research, industry and the public.

How was the data set created?

  1. From what previous works were the data drawn?
    NOAA bathy (source 1 of 1)
    NOAA, unpublished material, Multibeam bathymetry data - cleaned, merged, and tide corrected.

    Other_Citation_Details: Multiple NOAA survey areas.
    Type_of_Source_Media: External Hard Drive
    Source_Contribution:
    The original geophysical data for this project were collected during four hydrographic surveys conducted by NOAA NOS in 2000 and 2001 on the NOAA Ship Whiting and its launches 1005/1014. Multibeam bathymetric data were acquired with a Reson SeaBat 8101 and sidescan sonar backscatter data were acquired with Edgetech model 272-T (100 kHz) or the Klein T-5500 (455 kHz) sonar systems.
  2. How were the data generated, processed, and modified?
    Date: unknown (process 1 of 9)
    A hull-mounted Reson SeaBat 8101 acquired the shallow-water multibeam data for all four surveys. The Reson 8101 was operated at a frequency of 240 kHz and a maximum speed of 6 knots. The system is designed for operation in water depths of 5 to 125 m, and has a horizontal range of 75 to 500 m that depends on water depth. Each time the system fires or "pings", it collects 101 individual soundings in a swath oriented perpendicular to the vessel track. Acquisition was monitored in real time with the ISIS software (version 5.29) and recorded to XTF format. NOAA Office of Coast Survey converted the XTF data to CARIS HDCS (Hydrographic Data Cleaning System) format, then processed and tide-corrected the data with CARIS HIPS (Hydrographic Information Processing System) software. The CARIS HIPS database was transfered to the USGS/CZM in 2004 for use in this project. The NOAA acquisition vessels were also equipped with Odom Echotrac DF3200 MKII echosounders that logged high-frequency (100 kHz) vertical-beam soundings concurrently throughout the sidescan sonar and multibeam bathymetry surveying operations. Vertical-beam soundings were recorded in Hypack raw format and later converted to CARIS HDCS format. The NOAA Office of Coast Survey cleaned and merged the data and performed tide corrections using CARIS HIPS.
    Date: unknown (process 2 of 9)
    Bathymetry soundings from the multibeam surveys were exported from CARIS HIPS at a 2-meter grid interval for each of the four survey areas and vertical-beam soundings from surveys H10990, H10992, and H10994 were exported from CARIS HIPS at a 5-meter grid interval. The vertical-beam data from survey H01991 were processed by NOAA prior to their use of CARIS and a separate xyz file was provided for these soundings. The eight soundings files were merged to create a master file of over 17 million soundings within the survey areas. Person who carried out this activity:
    Seth Ackerman
    Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management
    Geologist
    c/o U.S. Geological Survey
    Woods Hole, MA
    USA

    (508) 548-8700 x2315 (voice)
    (508) 457-2310 (FAX)
    seth.ackerman@state.ma.us
    Date: unknown (process 3 of 9)
    GMT (Generic Mapping Tools - http://gmt.soest.hawaii.edu/) was used to create an interpolated grid of the bathymetry for the entire region. The soundings data were formatted for input into GMT and then filtered through the GMT block median routine to reduce the data and speed up the interpolation process. An interpolated grid was created using the GMT surface routine with a grid cell size of 30 m and a tension parameter of 0.5. The GMT grid was converted to an ASCII grid using the Gdal utility gdal_translate (FWTools, version 1.0.0a7 and Gdal, version 1.3.1). Person who carried out this activity:
    Seth Ackerman
    Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management
    Geologist
    c/o U.S. Geological Survey
    Woods Hole, MA
    USA

    (508) 548-8700 x2315 (voice)
    (508) 457-2310 (FAX)
    seth.ackerman@state.ma.us
    Date: unknown (process 4 of 9)
    In ArcGIS 9.0 (ArcToolbox) the ASCII grid was imported to an ESRI raster grid (cell size = 30 m). Person who carried out this activity:
    Seth Ackerman
    Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management
    Geologist
    c/o U.S. Geological Survey
    Woods Hole, MA
    USA

    (508) 548-8700 x2315 (voice)
    (508) 457-2310 (FAX)
    seth.ackerman@state.ma.us
    Data sources produced in this process:
    • bh_30mbath
    Date: 05-Nov-2015 (process 5 of 9)
    Edits to the metadata were made to fix any errors that MP v 2.9.30 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. Process dates were not in the original metadata file, so a value of unknown was used. In the case of the vertical resolution, the value of 9999 was entered to indicate that the original metadata did not contain the required information. The source citation of the source contribution was blank, so that information was populated based on the information contained in the process steps. Other minor edits were probably performed (title, publisher, publication place, etc.). 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. Person who carried out this activity:
    U.S. Geological Survey
    Attn: VeeAnn A. Cross
    Marine Geologist
    384 Woods Hole Rd.
    Woods Hole, MA

    508-548-8700 x2251 (voice)
    508-457-2310 (FAX)
    vatnipp@usgs.gov
    Date: 29-Jan-2018 (process 6 of 9)
    An error was fixed in one of the originator names. Person who carried out this activity:
    U.S. Geological Survey
    Attn: VeeAnn A. Cross
    Marine Geologist
    384 Woods Hole Road
    Woods Hole, MA

    508-548-8700 x2251 (voice)
    508-457-2310 (FAX)
    vatnipp@usgs.gov
    Date: 20-Jul-2018 (process 7 of 9)
    USGS Thesaurus keywords added to the keyword section. Person who carried out this activity:
    U.S. Geological Survey
    Attn: VeeAnn A. Cross
    Marine Geologist
    384 Woods Hole Road
    Woods Hole, MA

    508-548-8700 x2251 (voice)
    508-457-2310 (FAX)
    vatnipp@usgs.gov
    Date: 31-Jan-2019 (process 8 of 9)
    Fixed a broken link and added the DOI link. Person who carried out this activity:
    U.S. Geological Survey
    Attn: VeeAnn A. Cross
    Marine Geologist
    384 Woods Hole Road
    Woods Hole, MA

    508-548-8700 x2251 (voice)
    508-457-2310 (FAX)
    vatnipp@usgs.gov
    Date: 08-Sep-2020 (process 9 of 9)
    Added keywords section with USGS persistent identifier as theme keyword. Person who carried out this activity:
    U.S. Geological Survey
    Attn: VeeAnn A. Cross
    Marine Geologist
    384 Woods Hole Road
    Woods Hole, MA

    508-548-8700 x2251 (voice)
    508-457-2310 (FAX)
    vatnipp@usgs.gov
  3. What similar or related data should the user be aware of?

How reliable are the data; what problems remain in the data set?

  1. How well have the observations been checked?
  2. How accurate are the geographic locations?
    All of the NOAA survey vessels were equipped with Trimble DSM212L Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS) receivers. Launch 1005, which collected all of the multibeam bathymetry, was also equipped with a TSS POS/MV Model 320 (Position and Orientation System for Marine Vessels). Standard bathymetric processing, including tide corrections, soundings accuracy, and quality control were done by the NOAA Office of Coast Survey.
  3. How accurate are the heights or depths?
    Tidal datum for this project is Mean Lower Low Water (MLLW). The tide station at Boston, MA (844-3970) was the control for the vertical datum.
  4. Where are the gaps in the data? What is missing?
    Information unavailable from original metadata.
  5. How consistent are the relationships among the observations, including topology?
    These data have not been quantitatively compared to previous hydrographic data, although they generally agree with qualitative comparison of published NOAA charts.

How can someone get a copy of the data set?

Are there legal restrictions on access or use of the data?
Access_Constraints None
Use_Constraints These data are not to be used for navigation purposes. Mariners should refer to the appropriate nautical chart. Public domain data from the U.S. Government are freely redistributable with proper metadata and source attribution. Please recognize the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) as the source of this information. These data should not be used at resolutions for which it is not intended.
  1. Who distributes the data set? (Distributor 1 of 1)
    Seth Ackerman
    Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management
    Geologist
    c/o U.S. Geological Survey
    Woods Hole, MA
    USA

    (508) 548-8700 x2315 (voice)
    (508) 457-2310 (FAX)
    seth.ackerman@state.ma.us
  2. What's the catalog number I need to order this data set? Downloadable Data
  3. What legal disclaimers am I supposed to read?
    Although this data set has been used by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), no warranty, expressed or implied, is made by the USGS as to the accuracy of the data and/or related materials. The act of distribution shall not constitute any such warranty, and no responsibility is assumed by the USGS in the use of these data or related materials. Any use of trade, product, or firm names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.
  4. How can I download or order the data?
  5. What hardware or software do I need in order to use the data set?
    These data are available in Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) GRID format. The user must have software capable of importing and processing the data file.

Who wrote the metadata?

Dates:
Last modified: 18-Mar-2024
Metadata author:
Seth Ackerman
Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management
Geologist
c/o U.S. Geological Survey
Woods Hole, MA
USA

(508) 548-8700 x2315 (voice)
(508) 457-2310 (FAX)
whsc_data_contact@usgs.gov
Contact_Instructions:
The metadata contact email address is a generic address in the event the person is no longer with USGS. (updated on 20240318)
Metadata standard:
FGDC Content Standards for Digital Geospatial Metadata (FGDC-STD-001-1998)
This page is <https://cmgds.marine.usgs.gov/catalog/whcmsc/open_file_report/ofr2006-1008/bh_30mbath.grd.faq.html>
Generated by mp version 2.9.51 on Mon Mar 25 16:05:24 2024