LIDAR based predevelopment digital elevation model of southeastern Palm Beach County, Florida

A new technique was devised that produces a LIDAR based predevelopment Digital Elevation Model and offers a more superior visualization, of the natural landscape prior to development, than the Bare Earth Model produced by Florida International University's Hurricane Center. Two locations in southeastern Florida have been chosen for this study. The first site is utilized as a control for testing the model and contains a present day ridge system that runs north and south through the Boca Raton cemetery. The second site is a paleowatershed, the Yamato Marsh which was located in Delray Beach. Modeling of the marsh site will assist in delineating surficial geomorphic features before they were anthropogenically altered. The predevelopment Digital Elevation Model successfully represents human derived land-use changes and defines the watershed boundaries of the historic Yamato Marsh.