The Integrated Remote Sensing and Modeling Group (IRSMG) at the USGS Center for Coastal and Watershed Studies conducts investigations of the physical structure and ecological function of coastal ecosystems. The scope of IRSMG projects includes wetlands, estuaries, barrier islands, and coral reef ecosystems occurring about the United States and Caribbean coastal fringe. The IRSMG seeks to marry technical advances in remote sensing from satellite, aircraft, and vessel-based platforms with the natural resource management needs of National Seashores, National Parks, marine sanctuaries, and agencies responsible for the environmental health of major estuaries. The applied research activities of the IRSMG aim to incorporate emerging remote sensing methods in the investigation of the community metabolism and habitat complexity of coastal ecosystems.

This project focuses on advances in remote sensing techniques and applications from satellite, aircraft, and vessel-based platforms. In a close collaboration with NASA and NPS, aircraft-based lidar remote sensing data have been acquired over a variety of coastal communities. As part of this project, special emphasis has been placed on developing sophisticated algorithms for post-processing dense lidar data sets. The resulting fully-documented data products are readily ingestible by common surface modeling and GIS software packages.

A boat-mounted, georeferenced digital imaging system has been developed at the USGS for the monitoring and mapping of coral reef ecosystems. A software system has been developed for interactive browsing and quantitative analysis of these images.