Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune New River Geographic Bathymetry

Critical military training and testing on lands along the nation’s coastal and estuarine shorelines are increasingly placed at risk because of development pressures in surrounding areas, impairments due to other anthropogenic disturbances, and increasing requirements for compliance with environmental regulations. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) intends to enhance and sustain its training and testing assets and to optimize its stewardship of natural resources through the development and application of an ecosystem-based management approach on DoD installations. To accomplish this goal, particularly for installations in estuarine/coastal environments, the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) launched the Defense Coastal/Estuarine Research Program (DCERP) as a minimum 10-year effort at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune (MCBCL) in North Carolina. The results of the first six years of the program (DCERP1) are presented here. The overarching objectives of DCERP are to: (1) understand the effects of military training activities, infrastructure development, and other coastal military installations; (2) develop models, tools, and indicators to evaluate ecosystem health; and (3) recommend adaptive management strategies to sustain ecosystem natural resources within the context of an active military installation. High-quality bathymetry data for the New River Estuary are not available as originally anticipated. Close examination of existing bathymetry by DCERP PI's revealed that either substantial changes have occurred since previous surveys, or there were significant quality control problems during previous data collection with minimal supporting metadata. Incorporation of these pre-existing data into a bathymetry DEM and subsequent merging with the NOAA GEODAS database further revealed sparse data coverage in critical regions of research for several DCERP modules. In order to address the need for accurate bathymetric data, interferometric swath bathymetry was used to produce a high resolution (5-m) bathymetric map of the New River Estuary. The resulting data will provide a vital bathymetric baseline for various monitoring and modeling DCERP modules. In addition, these data will be useful to the Base in helping them to identify areas where boats may run aground during training activities, thus preventing the loss of vessel stranding times and/or hull damage, particularly in egress and ingress of Courthouse Bay.