GIS 5100 Forestry & LiDAR Lab

 This week we are onto the area of LiDAR.  What is LiDAR you ask?  Well it is defined as Light Detection and Ranging. There are countless application for this technology. For the purposes of this lab we focused on its application in forestry. We used LiDAR data .las file to create DEMs (Digital Elevation Models) and DMSs (Digital Surface Model). We used this information to calculate forest height and biomass density for the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.

We started by importing a .las file into our local scene in ArcGIS Pro. this was my first result. 

Seeing this my initial response was panic and asking myself what I did wrong. Fear not, just zoom in and the transformation occurs. You get that rainbow of color you were hoping for.  From there we went on to calculate for forest height by first using the Point File Information tool. Next, we created a DEM and a DSM using additional geoprocessing tools.  Here is my DEM layout.

Our next step involved using the LAS to Multipoint tool and the Pont to Raster tool to calculate the Biomass density. After multiple calculations I was able to a tree height  and a tree canopy layout.

It was important to review and refine map navigation skills as well. When dealing with scenes you need to be able to tilt the map.  I created a LiDAR layout map for this lab and attempted to tweet the colors here and work on the map navigation to better illustrate the way it lays over the topography.

The uses of LiDAR are really endless. This lab sparked my interest to see some of the ways it is being utilized.

I found this article very interesting and hope you will check it out:

https://geoslam.com/blog/2022/01/25/where-in-the-world-is-lidar-being-used/

Until next week ....