Airborne LiDAR and Orthoimagery for Applications in Southeast National Parks and Forests
Jordan TR, Madden M, Sharma JB, Panda SS. 2012. Airborne LiDAR and Orthoimagery for Applications in Southeast National Parks and Forests. In Merry K, Bettinger P, Lowe T, Nibbelink N, Siry J (ed): Proceedings of the 8th Southern Forestry and Natural Resources GIS Conference. Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, University of Georgia, Athens, GA
Researchers at the University of Georgia (UGA) Center for Remote Sensing and Mapping Science (CRMS) and Gainesville State College (GSC) Institute for Environmental Spatial Analysis (IESA) collaborated with Photo Science, Inc. to acquire and quality control check light detection and ranging (LiDAR) multiple return data and high-resolution orthoimagery of National Park and Forest areas in the Southern Appalachian Mountains. Funded by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), this project meets the objectives of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) initiative by creating and saving jobs while training students for high skill positions in geospatial technology and meeting management needs of national conservation areas. Leaf-off LiDAR data were acquired at 1-m resolution of the Tennessee portion of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park (GRSM) and adjacent Foothills Parkway, both of which are managed by the National Park Service (NPS) and are of high priority for national/global interests due to biodiversity, rare and endangered species and protection of some of the last orthoimagery also were acquired for both the Chattahoochee National Forest (CNF) and the entire GRSM. Following verification, these data will augment the National Elevation Dataset (NED) and orthoimage database of The National Map within information that can be used by many researchers in applications of point cloud LiDAR, 3-m bare earth DEMs and 1500 x 1500m tiled orthoimage mosaics. This paper will present an overview of the data acquisition in terms of geospatial workflow strategies, multi-team coordination, distance-learning and industryacademia partnership. The successful acquisition of the LiDAR and orthoimagery for valuable forest areas of the Southeastern U.S. completes a unique data set that is critical to NPS resource managers, local government planners and scientists of landscape-scale processes. Applications to-date include assessment of forest structure related to Hemlock Wooly Adelgid damage to Eastern hemlocks in CNF and comparisons of algorithms used to generate accurate bare earth surfaces from multiple return LiDAR point clouds.
- Type
- Conference Proceeding Paper
- Authors
- Jordan, Thomas; Madden, Marguerite; Sharma, J; Panda, Sudanshu
- Units
- GRSM
- Keywords
- acquisition, Education, Geography, GRSM-01021, Lidar, orthoimage, processing, Training