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U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) geographer Nadine Golden was the opening speaker at GIS Day 2010 in Watsonville, California, on November 17, 2010. "GIS" refers to geographic information systems—combinations of software and hardware used to capture, store, analyze, and display data linked to geographic locations. GIS Day is an international event sponsored by local GIS communities around the world. The November 17 meeting, held in the Watsonville Civic Plaza Community Room, was sponsored by the Central Coast Joint Data Committee (http://www.ccjdc.org/), which invited the USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center to participate. Golden, from the center's National Seafloor Mapping and Benthic Habitat Studies project, spoke about the techniques and methods used by center scientists for seafloor mapping. In her talk, titled "Seafloor Mapping and Benthic Habitat Studies at the USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center (PCMSC)," she outlined how project scientists collect and use traditional seafloor-mapping data—including rock and sediment samples, bottom video, sidescan-sonar data, and multibeam-sonar data—and how they develop new methods of combining these data to produce habitat and surficial-geology maps. She also described how methods of classification and displays of sonar, video, and lidar data are continually being enhanced, as well as how sampling data are compiled in usSEABED, a relational database of integrated quantitative and verbal data on seabed texture, composition, and geophysical properties. As an example of how all these data types can be used together, Golden discussed the California Seafloor Mapping Program (CSMP), an interdisciplinary study that USGS scientists are leading to create a series of comprehensive coastal and marine geologic and habitat base maps for all of California's state waters.