USM Gulf Coast Geospatial Center

Happy Global Surveyors Day and National Surveyors Week! Thanks to surveying professionals everywhere for the vital services they provide to our communities. We are proud to support surveying and precise positioning across the state through the Mississippi Real Time Network!

Learn more at https://surveyorsday.com/ !

Home - Global Surveyors Day   global 21 MarchsurveyORS’day   See All Global Surveying Events Host an Event submit an event about GLOBAL SurveyORS’ DAY The path to Global Surveyors’ Day began back in ancient Egypt when society first used surveying techniques to divide land. Throughout history, surveyors have remained th...

The GCGC spent this past Friday discussing and demonstrating data collection with using several geospatial technologies, including GNSS, total station surveying, terrestrial LiDAR, and Uncrewed Aerial Systems with Dr. David Holt's Geography Field Methods Class.

It’s been a great two days of sharing science and networking at the Mississippi Academy of Sciences Geology and Geography Division annual meeting! Maggie Waldron and Sydni Crain presented GCGC research, and Sydni took home the third place in the Student Presentation competition. Congratulations and great work Sydni!

"Coastal academic programs for coastal people and coastal jobs," here at the Gulf Park Campus! !

USM President shares vision for growing Coastal operations This week, WLOX toured USM’s Gulf Park campus with Dr. Joe Paul. He also discussed where the school’s Coastal operations fit in with his master plan for the University.

What a fun day with a great group of students! Thanks for having us Oak Park Elementary School!

Many thanks to Bayou View Elementary School for inviting us to participate in their STEM Night event yesterday! We had a blast talking with students and parents about using geospatial technologies like LiDAR and GNSS to research and monitor our coastal environment.

We had a great time sharing science and learning more about the great research going on across the Northern Gulf Coast at the 2023 Bays and Bayous Symposium in Mobile these last two days. Maggie Waldron presented preliminary findings from her project "Characterizing the Distribution of Phragmites australis along the Mississippi Coast using precise measurements of elevation, topography, and surface water salinity." (Art from local beach litter by Swiger Studio!)

First field data collection of 2023! Happy New Year!

Today is International EarthCache Day. An EarthCache is a special type of geocache - to learn more about geocaching and why we're involved, visit: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/geocaching.html

We collected some interesting data this week documenting the effects of target brightness on LiDAR returns. Who knew we had so many survey poles!

We're excited to share these results at the upcoming Mississippi Geospatial Conference here at USM Gulf Park!

Paul Frye Michael Amelunke Robert Gruba

Our 2022 interns presented the results of their summer GPS on Benchmarks field campaign yesterday. So far, they’ve visited, recovered, and/or occupied 56 survey marks across the six coastal counties, focusing on National Geodetic Survey Priority Marks. We are so proud and appreciative of all their hard work during their time with us so far! Keep an eye out for a full presentation of their work at the Mississippi Geospatial Conference October 20-21 (https://mastgis.org/home/conference-registration) !

For more information about the NGS GPS on Benchmarks Campaign, visit https://geodesy.noaa.gov/GPSonBM/.

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Hello from the field! We’re investigating spectral reflectance in Mississippi’s coastal marshlands to better understand how Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) measurements interact with both marsh vegetation and inundated marsh soils.

Mississippi’s coastal marshes are vulnerable to both global sea level rise (about 17 cm since the 1920s https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/hazards/sealevelrise/sealevelrise-tech-report.html ) and local subsidence, or gradual sinking of the land. These add up to around 4.7 mm per year of relative sea level rise along Mississippi’s coastline since 1978 (https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=8747437). We recently investigated how the Pascagoula River Marsh in Jackson County, Mississippi had changed given this increase in relative sea level between the years 1955 and 2014 through a time-series analysis of aerial image data. Although this marsh ecosystem is largely unmodified (the Pascagoula River is notable as the largest undammed river system by volume in the contiguous United States), almost 10% of the marsh area that existed in 1955 was lost to open water by 2014. You can learn more about the study at this story map: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/04f98571ab494db6ac0daec490687800.

Historical Marsh Change in the Pascagoula River Delta, MS Using Aerial Imagery to Quantify Estuarine Land Cover Trends since 1955

The GCGC research team has been busy in the field the last few weeks making topographic, bathymetric, vegetation and salinity measurements to support our mission of improving the understanding of our coastal environment using precise geospatial data and state-of-the-art technologies. We’re continuously gathering data to monitor and model our coastal environment, with the goal of helping inform the best possible land management strategies for a resilient Mississippi Gulf Coast.

The USM GCGC hosted our Regional Geospatial Modeling co-investigators from across the five Gulf states yesterday, with representation from the Alabama Department of Transportation, LSU Center for GeoInformatics, TAMU-CC Conrad Blucher Institute for Surveying & Science, and UF IFAS School of Forest, Fisheries, and Geomatics Sciences SFFGS to discuss our continued collaborative efforts and the future of geospatial modeling in the Gulf Region. Much progress has been made in recent years toward our unified goals of improving geodetic control along the Gulf of Mexico coast, enhancing understanding of our coastal geography, and improving resilience of our region to sea level rise and subsidence. We’re excited to continue this essential work into the future.

The USM GCGC is accepting applications for a graduate research assistant to begin in Fall 2022 or Spring 2023!

The assistantship is open to master's students working toward a degree in Geography at USM. Students with research interests aligned with the mission of the GCGC will be considered, including: GNSS applications, precise positioning, coastal biogeography, coastal modeling, UAS applications, remote sensing, and GIS applications.

For more information, please visit https://www.usm.edu/gulf-coast-geospatial-center/graduate_research_assistantships.php.

Graduate Research Assistantships | Gulf Coast Geospatial Center | The University of Southern Mississippi Information about applying for graduate research funding from the Gulf Coast Geospatial Center

The GCGC has a new publication out entitled "Precise Elevation Thresholds Associated with Salt Marsh-Upland Ecotones along the Mississippi Gulf Coast", available open access from the Annals of the American Association of Geographers! Researchers examined the precise elevations at which several marsh plant communities exist along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, with a focus on the marsh-upland ecotone, or the narrow transition zone between marsh plant communities and the adjacent wooded upland plant communities. The results indicated that the marsh-upland ecotone ranges in elevation by less than a foot, and tends to occur between 0.4 meters and 0.6 meters in elevation (NAVD88). This research could help improve spatial modeling of marsh migration in response to sea level rise, changes in sedimentation, and land use change. We hope that it can help inform better land use planning as well as lead to a better understanding of coastal marsh resilience to sea level change. The article is available for download at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24694452.2022.2047593?fbclid=IwAR1Ak3AhZU7e_fzYNYDFwPo9lPt6iko1bo-tnbAWmUoBqMtb31MvD06iNRs.

Our 2022 interns are getting started on this summer’s GPS on Benchmarks data collection campaign! We’ll be occupying benchmarks across the southern half of the state to improve Mississippi’s geodetic control infrastructure as part of The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)/National Geodetic Survey’s national effort.

Internship opportunity at the MS Department of Marine Resources!

UPDATE: Also listed on our website is an Estuarine Ecology Internship.

We have several paid internship opportunities available. All positions pay $12 per hour and is for 129 hours per month. Positions are for up to 8 weeks, depending on the intern’s school schedule.

More Information: dmr.ms.gov/employment/

Our summer field season is in full swing! We’ve been collecting data in our Coastal Preserves for several research projects to better understand dynamic relationships between elevation and marsh vegetation as well as to help improve remotely sensed data products. We were also joined in the field last week by faculty and students from the USM School of Coastal Resilience, who are working on a pretty exciting documentary film project!

We couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get outside on this beautiful day! GCGC researchers collected cal/val UAS LiDAR data this afternoon at Southern Miss Gulf Park as part of ongoing research investigating the accuracy of coastal elevation models developed using LiDAR data.

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GCGC researchers Maggie Waldron and Michael Amelunke gave presentations at the 2022 Graduate Student Symposium hosted by the Marine and Estuarine Graduate Student Association this past weekend at the USM Gulf Coast Research Lab's Marine Education Center. The symposium hosted students from across the five gulf states and was entirely organized by USM graduate student volunteers. The event and presentations were all phenomenal! Always a great day to share science, especially at such a beautiful campus!

USM School of Ocean Science and Engineering Southern Miss Gulf Park The University of Southern Mississippi

GCGC’s Director Dr. Greg Carter and Graduate Research Assistant Michael Amelunke represented the Center at today’s Mississippi Association for Spatial Technologies (MAST) April general meeting, where they presented the Center’s latest research and applications. We’re proud to be involved in this wonderful organization!

Southern Miss Gulf Park Gulf Blue Michael Amelunke

The GCGC Real Time Network (RTN) was created in 2005 as part of a nationwide effort to enable access to accurate and consistent heights and positions led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) National Geodetic Survey (NGS). Since its inception, the USM GCGC RTN has grown to a network of 52 Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS) positioned throughout the state of Mississippi. The GCGC RTN provides essential support to a wide variety of industries and institutions, including surveying, engineering, transportation, precision agriculture, emergency management, and scientific research.

Pictured is the GCGC's Bay-Waveland CORS, which is co-located with NOAA/NOS/CO-OPS station #8747437 (https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/stationhome.html?id=8747437).

The network can be accessed real time to receive corrected position information to a GNSS rover in the field. Static data are also available via on-demand download from our Reference Data Shop. Use of the network is free of charge. For more information or to create an account, please visit https://www.usm.edu/gulf-coast-geospatial-center/real_time_network.php.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Gulf Blue Southern Miss Gulf Park

The GCGC research team spent the earlier part of this week at the Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve measuring Surface Elevation Table (SET) rod positions and benchmarks as part of a long-term monitoring effort by the Grand Bay NERR to measure accretion and subsidence at 15 marsh sites across the estuary. We also documented plant community elevations as part of our ongoing estuarine habitat mapping efforts here at the Center. Thanks for having us Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve!

Welcome to the USM Gulf Coast Geospatial Center’s page! The GCGC is located at the University of Southern Mississippi’s Gulf Park Campus in Long Beach, Mississippi. We are the lead institution for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Geodetic Survey Geospatial Modeling program for the southeastern United States. The Center works with federal, state, academic, and commercial partners in research, development, and applications of precise geospatial data, remote sensing, and computational tools and models to enhance the understanding of relative sea level rise and its impacts, coastal change over time, and nature-human dynamics in the coastal system.

For more information, please visit our website at usm.edu/gcgc