SYMPOSIUM MINISYMPOSIA

ABSTRACT

The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) applied ESRI's ArcView Geographic Information System (GIS) to acquire, manipulate, and display sediment physical characteristics, mine burial predictions, and bathymetry for the Formosa Straight, including the coasts of Taiwan and Southeast China. The resulting data will be integrated into the Naval Oceanographic Office Comprehensive Environmental Assessment System (CEAS) GIS in support of on-going U.S. Navy efforts in anti-submarine warfare and mine counter measures.

Digital data for these areas was not readily available from conventional sources. NRL used ArcView to digitize sediment characteristics data and physiographic province data from plots, figures, and other graphics in the open scientific literature. This data was used with the Naval Coastal System Center mine Impact Burial Prediction Model (IBPM) to produce mine burial predictions. This data was also used in conjunction with digitized National Imaging Mapping Agency (NIMA) charts to produce a digital database of sediment characteristics and physiographic provinces covering the entire area of interest.

While developing this database, NRL was presented with the challenge of fusing and adequately portraying large and diverse, multi-scaled data sets. Over 3000 discrete sediment characteristics points were binned into thirty-three categories or themes, each of which was identified by a unique point symbol. For example, themes containing sand sediment locations were represented by green circles and themes containing shell sediment locations were represented by white triangles. Over 1700 sediment provinces, represented as color-filled polygons, were categorized into 33 unique themes. 150 physiographic provinces were also represented as polygons and required thirty-one themes. More than 700 shorelines and land features were contained in yet another theme. The data underwent quality control checks for accuracy and completeness.

This effort ultimately produced over 5700 features compiled from 27 charts of various scales. The database consists of one polygon theme containing all sediment province data and land features, one polygon theme containing physiographic province data, many point themes containing sediment characteristics data, and mine burial predictions. ArcView was chosen for because of its relative low cost and ease of use. The final ArcView files were converted to ArcInfo for seamless migration to the CEAS GIS.

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