Central Coast GIS Products Metadata - Farallon Islands
Compiled by Seafloor Mapping Lab at California State University Monterey Bay

This document provides a general metadata summary of marine habitat mapping data for the region around the Farallon Islands, off San Francisco Bay - provided in support of the California Seafloor Mapping Program (CSMP). Detailed metadata are provided in xml format with each individual data file. 

Marine data offered here represent part of a larger, privately-funded survey subsequently provided to the California Seafloor Mapping Project for inclusion in it's efforts to create a high-resolution 1:24,000 scale geologic and habitat base map series covering all of California's 14,500 km2 state waters out to the 3 mile limit, and support of the state's Marine Life Protection Act Initiative (MLPA) goal to support a statewide network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). 

Surveys were conducted from February 17-24, March 7-11, April 4-10, 2007.

Multibeam bathymetry data for the Farallon Islands surveys were acquired using a Reson 8101 MBES and collected aboard a series of Fugro Pelagos, Inc. (FPI) directed vessels (MV Pacific Star, FV Quicksilver). FPI documention (contains more detail regarding the ships employed and their survey equipment configurations. The Seafloor Mapping Lab at CSUMB created these final products (UTM Zone 10 NAD83 (CORS96)) from the initial FPI post-processed multibeam bathymetry data (UTM Zone 10 WGS84).Bathymetry products are presented according to standard California State Mapping Project specifications, including depth-dependent resolutions of 2m for data from the 0-85m depth range, 5m for 80-250m depth range, and 10m for depths of 230-1500m. Comprehensive 2m & 5m data sets are included. 

Please note: ArcGIS 9.x does not have a built-in geographic transformation for relating the WGS84 and NAD83 (CORS96) datums.
For use in ArcGIS 9.3, a Custom Transformation was created using the same method and parameters as the built-in WGS_1984_(ITRF00)_To_NAD_1983_(CORS96) transformation in ArcGIS 10.
The custom transformation is zipped with this data file (WGS_1984_(ITRF00)_To_NAD_1983_(CORS96).gtf).
If the gtf file is placed in the \\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\ESRI\ArcToolbox\CustomTransformations folder, the transformation will be available in ArcGIS.