Earlier this year, Senior Biologist Scott Bryan from the Central Arizona Project (CAP) blogged about how the CAP is using BioBase to manage sedimentation in Arizona’s lifeblood 336-mile aqueduct. Since then, CAP GIS Wizard Glenn Emanuel has worked some amazing magic on the BioBase grid exports using Spatial and 3D Analyst Extensions for ArcGIS (Figure 1).
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| Figure 1. Images showing the change in sediment volume prior to and after experimental dredging activities in a Forebay of the CAP canal. The Raster Calculator in ArcGIS’s Spatial Analyst was used to subtract a “current” bathymetry from a baseline bathymetry (e.g., “as built”) to estimate sediment height and volume. Images are 3-dimensionally enhanced using 3D Analyst for ArcGIS. Image courtesy of Scott Bryan and Glenn Emanuel, Central Arizona Project |
The data and images allow CAP to make informed decisions regarding the efficiency of sediment removal operations. In addition, ArcScene was used to produce a 3D scene of the forebay (Figure 2), which can then be animated with a video fly-through.
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| Figure 2. “Fly-through” images of sediment height in Little Harquahala Forebay in the CAP Canal collected by Lowrance HDS sonar and GPS, BioBase cloud processing software, and finally exported/imported into ArcScene. Image courtesy of Scott Bryan and Glenn Emanuel, Central Arizona Project. |
Any user of BioBase properly equipped with the proper third party GIS software can create these amazing map products that are more than just pretty pictures. They create a real-life, tangible perspective of aquatic resource conditions that BioBase users are interested in managing, protecting, and restoring.