Topographic digital surface model (DSM) for Whiskeytown Lake and surrounding area, 2019-06-03

This portion of the data release presents a digital surface model (DSM) and hillshade of Whiskeytown Lake and the surrounding area derived from Structure from Motion (SfM) processing of aerial imagery acquired on 2019-06-03. Unlike a digital elevation model (DEM), the DSM represents the elevation of the highest object within the bounds of a cell. Vegetation, buildings and other objects have not been removed from the data. In addition, data artifacts resulting from noise and vegetation in the original imagery have not been removed. However, in unvegetated areas such as reservoir shorelines and deltas, the DSM is equivalent to a DEM because it represents the ground surface elevation. The raw imagery used to create this DSM was acquired from a manned aircraft on 2019-06-03. The acquisition flight was conducted by The 111th Group Aerial Photography, using a Nikon D850 camera. The acquisition covered two areas-of-interest (AOI) at different scales. The AOI for this dataset (referred to as AOI-A) covered the area immediately surrounding Whiskeytown Lake, which was the same area imaged in the 2018-12-02 acquisition. The imagery was acquired from an approximate altitude of 610 meters (2,000 feet) above ground level, to produce a nominal ground sample distance (pixel size) of 5 centimeters (2 inches). An onboard dual-frequency GPS receiver was used to record the precise time and position of each image. Coordinates for ground control points consisting of photo-identifiable objects were measured independently using survey-grade post-processed kinematic (PPK) GPS.