Airborne Remote Sensing

LiDAR = Light Detection and Ranging

House of Cards – Radiohead (LiDAR!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nTFjVm9sTQ
Airborne Remote Sensing
LiDAR = Light Detection and Ranging
• Works a lot like radar – shoots a beam of EMR and
measures how long it takes to return to the sensor.
• But because most LiDAR systems use light in the
optical part of the spectrum, it’s a bit easier to
interpret.
• Also often finer spatial resolutions.
 Airborne Remote Sensing
LiDAR = Light Detection and Ranging
• Usually collect data in the NIR
• (could do VIS but energy has to be super low for
safety reasons)
1064 nm

What’s one bummer about

working in the VIS/NIR part
of the spectrum?
Airborne Remote Sensing
LiDAR = Light Detection and Ranging

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYbhNSUnIdU
Airborne Remote Sensing
LiDAR = Light Detection and Ranging
Five types of LiDAR ‘products’ you might encounter
1. ‘First returns’ (tops of whatever is on the ground)
2. ‘Last returns’ (topography – vegetation removed)
3. Pseudo-waveform (lots of points)
4. Waveform (even more points!)
5. Ground based (we’ll discuss last)

• Side note: accuracies are usually ~20 cm horizontal and

~10 cm vertical. So pretty good.
Airborne Remote Sensing
LiDAR = Light Detection and Ranging
The language of LiDAR (vocabulary to know)
1. Pulse – chunk of light that comes out of the sensor
2. Return – light that comes back to the sensor
3. Point density - # pulses per m2 on the ground
4. Spot or post spacing – ground distance between pulses
Airborne Remote Sensing
LiDAR = Light Detection and Ranging
[some people refer to point cloud data as the third type of data, on the
same level as raster and vector]

LiDAR Point Cloud

Airborne Remote Sensing
LiDAR = Light Detection and Ranging

LiDAR Point Cloud

From the Warra SuperSite in Tasmania, Australia

www.tern.org.au
Airborne Remote Sensing
LiDAR = Light Detection and Ranging

Don’t forget the third dimension!

From the Warra SuperSite in Tasmania, Australia

www.tern.org.au
Airborne Remote Sensing
LiDAR = Light Detection and Ranging

Don’t forget the third dimension!

From the Warra SuperSite in Tasmania, Australia

www.tern.org.au
 Airborne Remote Sensing
LiDAR = Light Detection and Ranging
How to make a DEM in a forest
1. Extract only ‘last return’ points or lowest elevation points.

From the Warra SuperSite in Tasmania, Australia

www.tern.org.au
 Airborne Remote Sensing
LiDAR = Light Detection and Ranging
How to make a DEM in a forest
2. Fit a surface to these ground points (connect them to nearest neighbors)

From the Warra SuperSite in Tasmania, Australia

www.tern.org.au
 Airborne Remote Sensing
LiDAR = Light Detection and Ranging
How to make a DEM in a forest
3. Remove any outlier points (calculate slope and set a threshold).

From the Warra SuperSite in Tasmania, Australia

www.tern.org.au
 Airborne Remote Sensing
LiDAR = Light Detection and Ranging
Make a DEM
4. Turn the data into a raster (grid it) and you have a DEM!

This method won’t

work well for landscapes
with buildings or really
steep relief (cliffs)

harrisgeospatial.com
 Airborne Remote Sensing
LiDAR = Light Detection and Ranging
Calculate Forest Height?
1. Fit a surface over the tops of your canopy & grid to desired resolution

From the Warra SuperSite in Tasmania, Australia

www.tern.org.au
 Airborne Remote Sensing
LiDAR = Light Detection and Ranging
Calculate Forest Height?
1. Fit a surface over the tops of your canopy & grid to desired resolution

From the Warra SuperSite in Tasmania, Australia

www.tern.org.au
 Airborne Remote Sensing
LiDAR = Light Detection and Ranging
Calculate Forest Height?
2. Subtract!

vegetation height!

From the Warra SuperSite in Tasmania, Australia

www.tern.org.au
 Airborne Remote Sensing
LiDAR = Light Detection and Ranging
Calculate Forest Height?

NDVI Vegetation height

Santa Cruz Island, California
 Airborne Remote Sensing
LiDAR = Light Detection and Ranging
What about the ‘Point Cloud’?
Create a 3D grid of ‘Voxels’ (Volumetric Pixels)

From the Warra SuperSite in Tasmania, Australia

www.tern.org.au
 Airborne Remote Sensing
LiDAR = Light Detection and Ranging
What about the ‘Point Cloud’?
‘Slice’ the data into a 3D grid of ‘Voxels’ (Volumetric Pixels)

From the Warra SuperSite in Tasmania, Australia

www.tern.org.au
 Airborne Remote Sensing
LiDAR = Light Detection and Ranging
What about the ‘Point Cloud’?
Once you have a stack of ‘voxel’ data you can do all sorts of fun calculations!
• Quadratic Mean Canopy Height (correlates with forest biomass)
• Leaf Area Density (m2/m3)
• Understory density (# lidar returns in bottom 1 or 2 meters of data)
• And more!
Airborne Remote Sensing
LiDAR = Light Detection and Ranging
How do you actually do any of this?
• Hopefully you have a LAS file with a projected coordinate system
• Biggest challenge is file size (can be HUGE depending on point density)
• Lots of software options!
• ArcGIS has pretty good capabilities
• QGIS
• GRASS
• R
• ENVI
• ERDAS
• Once you have processed (gridded) data, object-based or rule-based
analysis will probably be good ways to go.
Airborne Remote Sensing
LiDAR = Light Detection and Ranging
Non-Forest Examples

Subsidence – Figure on the right shows how much this

thermokarst landscape sank after a fire
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article_pf.asp?ID=4386
Airborne Remote Sensing
LiDAR = Light Detection and Ranging
Non-Forest Examples

Urban Areas – this LiDAR map of NYC was used to assess prospects for rooftop
solar panel installation
http://stateenergyreport.com/2011/12/22/high-tech-solar-map-shows-energy-potential-for-every-building-in-new-york-city/
Airborne Remote Sensing
LiDAR = Light Detection and Ranging
Non-Forest Examples

Archaeology – LiDAR used to remove

forest cover to find archaeological sites in
the tropics (Mexico, here)
Fisher et al 2011 PE & RS
http://onlinedigitalpublishing.com/publication/?i=83306
Airborne Remote Sensing
LiDAR = Light Detection and Ranging
Non-Forest Examples

Geomorphology – historical river meanders in Peru (Carnegie Airborne

Observatory) cao.carnegiescience.edu
Airborne Remote Sensing
LiDAR = Light Detection and Ranging
Ground-based LiDAR

Forest measurement with an Echidna®

http://www.bu.edu/tech/support/research/visualization/gallery/lidar/
Airborne Remote Sensing
Ground based LiDAR = Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS)

datumk.com
Airborne Remote Sensing
Ground based LiDAR = Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS)

nytimes.com Velodyne LiDAR via technologyreview.com