Greetings,

Steven McCollough here attempting some citizen science and mapping our bay in Lake Michigan.

I am in the beginning phases of mapping and have just registered Reefmaster for both structure and mosaic packages.

I am hoping the regulars on this forum can help me get started. My mapping platform is a custom canoe with outrigger designed for stability and electric battery storage. I have set up and successfully launched with about four hours of data to import and use for experimental purposes. Using the Lowrance Hook Reveal with the possibility to load Navionics I created a few tracks to work with. I am going to be using a medium grade gaming computer with seemingly adequate power.

Going forward I need to accomplish data acquisition this summer for work off season on creating maps. My current goals are;

Learn from the forum, the user guide, and specific pointers provided here.
Create a mapping plan for my first project. (spacing, settings, best practices, etc..}
Spend the the rest of the summer acquiring data.
Spend the winter on the computer end of mapping.

As this attached image shows, I have successfully imported a polygon and set it as the perimeter shoreline. Later I need to adjust the one point in this perimeter that is actually a point out in lake Michigan as I am actually mapping a bay not a lake. I created a mapping project with it's own boundary. I then imported the test tracks and started playing with the software controls.





A specific challenge currently is why the tracks go from narrow to wide in the results. I must not understand how the selection of scan type on the Lowrance affects the recording of a track. Also I need to standardize my settings so the data stays consistent over time. I need to learn which need to be set now and not changed if this is important. I need to understand how dense a survey I can afford to do in terms of spacing the tracks and the trade offs in details.

Any specific advice going forward would be appreciated. I know reading the right information in the right order really helps and so I am looking for suggestions. I find the help to be well done but hard to prioritize what to learn first.

Thank-you
steb

Hi Steb, and welcome!
It looks like you are off to a good start with the lake outline etc.
The issue with tracks going from thin to wide is one of interpolation. For depth data to be populated in a map area there needs to be data points on each side of that area within the "Max Intepolation" distance defined in the map project. The maximum value for this parameter is 250m, so when recording data it is important that your trails are closer together than this. Obviously, the closer you run your trails the more accurate your map will be, but at the cost of increased survey time.