LIDAR for mapping colonial New England

[Rydog]

Came across this article today. You may need to register to view the article more than once. Seems like a good way to find some new sites but probably cost prohibitive.

"Lost" New England Revealed by High-Tech Archaeology

 

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A History of Mining on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska - Grab it through Amazon!

[doc-d]

Lidar is very cool tech……hope to find some views for my country

 

[Jason in Enid]

Yeah, that's pretty dang cool! I'm sure that it's unavailable to any of us lowly commoners though, and I don't see public funded archies making their lidar data available.

 

[Dirt.Hound]

Lidar... similar to radar, but with lasers. Can be done with incredibly high resolution and has the ability to define surface features, even through forest canopy and other vegetation. It is very costly, though... especially if done on a large scale. I used to work with lidar data and have often thought how useful it would be for metal detecting haha... thanks for the link! interesting read

 

[Bitpusher]

I'm researching using this technique to do low-cost terrain mapping for relic hunting.

There is certainly nothing out there cheap enough, but it's looks possible to hack something together.

Here's a thread where UAV builders were talking about this sort of thing just over a year ago. Penetrating vegetation should just be a matter of using an IR laser of the appropriate wavelength - it could even penetrate topsoil/hummus to a small degree.

Thermal might also be an option, though more limited in application. If there's a stone foundation 6" underground in a dirt field, that area would take longer to heat as the sun rises, leaving a detectable area of cooler ground above it. This would require the cooperation of weather, though.

My ideal right now is a balloon-mounted LIDAR-based telemetry package. Attach it to a tethered balloon filled with helium from Walmart, let it do it's thing, then bring it down and hook it up to a laptop. No promises, but I think I could put together such a beast for a retail price of around $20k - not cheap, but not prohibitive, either. About the same price threshold as a GPR.

 

[Rydog]

Thanks for the link Bitpusher. That's a very interesting thread.

 

[Follows Camp Craig]

Aerial photos reveal foundations during a drought season in G.B.
I wonder what more could be found with modern sensors?

 

[Bitpusher]

Aerial photos reveal foundations during a drought season in G.B.
What more could be found with modern sensors?

Lots.

As I touched on above, thermal cameras can see differences in heat due to the makeup of materials under the surface. Lasers in the non-visible spectrum can see through vegetation.

 

[Follows Camp Craig]

I wasn't disagreeing with you, it was more of an "ah ha" moment.