Merrick GeoSpatial Group Providing Services Covering 23,500 Square Miles for Oklahoma and Nebraska

Merrick & Company’s  (www.merrick.com)  geospatial solutions group is currently providing high-resolution digital elevation data from LiDAR, covering 11,005 square miles of various watersheds located in Oklahoma. Work is being done under a contract with URS Corporation, who is the prime consultant, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture – Natural Resources Conservation Service (USDA-NRCS). By utilizing the LiDAR technology, data will be used by Oklahoma NRCS to generate digital elevation models and contours for use in a wide variety of conservation practices including erosion control, wetland restoration, flood control, and breach inundation studies for Emergency Action Plans on High Hazard dams.   Merrick has supported Oklahoma NRCS since2006 with similar services.

Currently, Merrick is working under contract with Magnolia River (Huntsville, AL) to provide airborne LiDAR acquisition of 12,495 square miles through Nebraska from the northeast to the southwest regions. The work also includes Merrick post-processing services. This work is a continuation of work completed for the Nebraska NRCS office since 2006.

Merrick’s findings on this work will be used for the following needs:      

Delineation of Wetland Watersheds – the lynchpin of the RWI is the delineation of watersheds for the thousands of wetlands in the Rainwater Basin. Because of the low relief in the Rainwater Basin, this is only possible with detailed elevation data provided by LiDAR.
Soils Mapping – used to determine slope and aspect which is to be used to reduce the time and cost to map soils accurately.
Conservation Planning – plan and design terraces, buffers along streams, and stream restoration planning which will help in reducing water pollution and help with maintaining the sustainability of the land.
Dam Breach Analysis – model the effects of dam breaches to determine the area that would flood for dam safety assessments.
Floodplain  Mapping Engineering Design and Reviews
Merrick & Company, an $120 million geospatial, engineering, architecture, design-build, and surveying firm, serves domestic and international clients by providing geospatial technologies, products, and services for the sustainable infrastructure, energy,  and national security markets.  The firm’s most recent work includes providing terrestrial scanning for an electrical substations for Xcel Energy and acquiring light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data for Idaho Power, Tri-State Generation and Transmission and for a wind farm located in Kansas.  Merrick maintains ten offices in the U.S. as well as two offices in Mexico, office in Canada, and The United Kingdom.