Environmental monitoring and planning involves multi-disciplinary teams of scientists, policy experts, and managers working together on a broad range of regional, national, and international projects. Examples of environmental monitoring and planning include establishing or observing marine protected areas, monitoring coastal erosion and beach migration, developing fisheries management plans, planning for dredging or beach nourishment operations, dealing with current waste disposal or monitoring old dump sites, and planning for weather events and sea level rise. After an initial study period where all currently available data is gathered, organizations may plan for further data collection to support decisions or to maintain a continuous monitoring record. Enormous varieties of data may be part of any project, depending on its goal and scale; multibeam and single beam sonar bathymetric soundings, lidar points, biological and sediment samples, still and video imagery, multibeam backscatter and sidescan sonar imagery, water column data from multibeam sonars, CTD sensors, and ADCP profilers, sub-bottom information, and glider data are just a handful of examples.
One of the key reasons to use Fledermaus is the ease of data integration; another is data presentation. Both are vital when working with multi-disciplinary teams and varied datasets from any number of sensors, software programs, or computer models. Fledermaus directly supports many standard formats for gridded and ungridded bathymetric data, topographic data, and modeled surfaces, including multi-column ASCII, LAS, GSF, GMT GRD, NetCDF and Esri grids;
data can be displayed together in the scene at its native resolution. Adding supporting data such as location points, backscatter and sidescan imagery, video and still imagery, or delineation polygons is simple and wizard-based. Images can be draped on the surface, or hung as vertical curtains in the watercolumn. The built-in time interface allows creation of complex animations showing sea level rise, sediment migration, or dispersal patterns. Your 4D Fledermaus scenes can be distributed and viewed using iView4D, the free downloadable viewer. Or you may choose to create high-resolution perspective images, fly-through movies in MPEG or WMV format, or Google Earth KMZs to present your data. Fledermaus also offers direct integration toEsri ArcGIS®ArcGIS® trademark provided under license from Esri, FM Viz4D, or Any Fledermaus Bundlesoftware1 for collaboration, data storage, dissemination, or presentation.
If additional data collection is required, Fledermaus provides some of the best tools around for data processing. For bathymetric and coastal lidar data,CUBEThe CUBE algorithm was developed by Dr. Brian Calder at the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping/Joint Hydrographic Center at the University of New Hampshireand Area Based processing will take your data from unrefined soundings and point information to the best possible seabed or terrain surface quickly. The newly improved multibeam backscatter processing tools will allow you to create high resolution mosaics and Angle Range Analysis(ARA)The FMGeocoder Toolbox (FMGT) product and ARA analysis originates from research by Dr. Luciano Fonseca at the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping/Joint Hydrographic Center at the University of New Hampshireseafloor characterizations to aid in interpretation and monitoring. And if multibeam water column data is being used to estimate fish stocks or show plume migration, Fledermaus provides one of the most intuitive, user friendly water column processing and visualization tools available.
For an example of an environmental monitoring agency using Fledermaus, see the UK Centre for Environment, Fisheries, and Aquaculture Science (Cefas) website.
University of New Hampshire Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping / Joint Hydrographic Center and NOAA Office of Exploration and Research