Fusion of SHOALS bathymetric lidar and passive spectral data for shallow water rapid environmental assessment

Abstract

The simultaneous estimation of seafloor and water column information from a combination of bathymetric lidar and passive spectral data represents an evolution in shallow water mapping. Here, we demonstrate recent progress on the use of SHOALS waveforms and depths to constrain inversion algorithms for passive spectral data. We use these inversions within a data fusion paradigm to achieve 3-dimensional benthic mapping, while simultaneously describing horizontal spatial variations in water column optical parameters.