LIDAR view of the Golden Gate Bridge

The Seafloor Mapping Lab at the California State University in Monterey Bay has recently obtained a new vessel-mounted Lidar system for shoreline surveys. From their website:

The high-resolution data set seen above was collected using SFML's new vessel-mounted mobile marine LIDAR system. Working with our industry partners, Riegl and Applanix, we have implemented an easily and rapidly deployable laser scanner capable of achieving decimeter accuracy with sub-meter resolution at a 1 kilometer range. This system gives SFML the ability to map the intertidal shoreline, offshore rocks and pinnacles and coastal features in unprecedented detail without the need for more costly airborne LIDAR surveys. The high spatial precision and accuracy of the system enable SFML to reliably monitor and quantify coastal erosion and landslide rates, bridge deformation, railway subsidence and coastal highway slippage through repetitive shoreline mapping surveys; information critical to coastal communities as they plan for climate change and sea level rise.

Integration of this technology with their existing mapping systems allows for some pretty impressive data displays:

Combined bathy/topo DEM of the Golden Gate built by merging SFML's laser scanner (gray) and multibeam sonar (colored by depth) data (source: http://seafloor.csumb.edu/laserscanner.html)

They also have some pretty sweet 3D fly-throughs of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Los Padres Reservoir. I have included their Golden Gate Bridge fly-through below: