Lake Tahoe

	False sun illumination of bathymetry and land DTM
	Backscatter from multibeam and land DTM.
	Quicktime movie flying through the Lake Tahoe region.
	Shaded relief oblique view of Lake Tahoe bathymetry and land DTM looking towards the northwest.
	Download Arc/Info Export (.e00) files and full resolution TIFF images.

The major objective of this survey was to map the bathymetry of Lake Tahoe, California-Nevada to fulfill a commitment made during the Lake Tahoe Presidential Forum in 1997. The only existing bathymetry of Lake Tahoe, collected in 1923, was recently compiled by Rowe and Stone (1997), but the data density is inadequate for the level of scientific studies ongoing and anticipated in the near future for Lake Tahoe. Recent advances in marine multibeam-sonar capabilities now permit a cost-effective way, to precisely map the bathymetry of large areas of the ocean floor with 100% coverage. This survey applied this state-of-the-art ocean technology to Lake Tahoe. The newest of these high-resolution multibeam mapping systems also simultaneously collects backscatter (similar to sidescan sonar) imagery that results in a complimentary and co-registered data set that is related to the distribution of lake-floor materials and textures. The two types of maps that resulted from this cruise provide the multidisciplinary Lake Tahoe research community an unprecedented set of base maps upon which to build their studies.

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