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Quick Introduction To Lidar and Basic Lidar Tools

The document provides a quick introduction to lidar and basic lidar tools. It defines lidar as using laser pulses to measure distance, and describes the basic components of a lidar system including a laser, telescope, and detector. It then discusses different types of lidar systems including the laser used, platform, and data outputs like point spacing and file formats. Finally it provides examples of analyzing lidar point clouds to measure vegetation structure and derive metrics related to wildlife habitat.

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75 views34 pages

Quick Introduction To Lidar and Basic Lidar Tools

The document provides a quick introduction to lidar and basic lidar tools. It defines lidar as using laser pulses to measure distance, and describes the basic components of a lidar system including a laser, telescope, and detector. It then discusses different types of lidar systems including the laser used, platform, and data outputs like point spacing and file formats. Finally it provides examples of analyzing lidar point clouds to measure vegetation structure and derive metrics related to wildlife habitat.

Uploaded by

mwuest
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Quick Introduction to Lidar and

Basic Lidar Tools


What is Lidar
 LIDAR is an Acronym for LIght Detection And
Ranging
 A basic lidar device consists of a laser, an
optical telescope, and a detector.

Laser

Telescope/
Detector
What is Lidar ? - Cont.
 The detector counts the intensity of photons
returned over fixed time intervals and these
intensities over times are converted to heights
called range bins.
 range bin = dz=(c*dt)/2, where c = the speed of
light, dz = distance dt = time. 160 ns would =
24m of dz See
http://pcl.physics.uwo.ca/science/lidarintro/ for
details.
Types of Lidar - Lasers
 Lasers can be pulsed or continuous wave, or
can be of different frequencies
 Standard airborne lasers will be near -
infrared(1047nm, 1064nm, and 1550nm).
 Bathymetric lasers – green (EAARL
NOAA/USGS, Commercial)
 Multibeam Lidar – 2 lasers near infrared and
Green – mainly coastal, but may become more
mainstream.
 http://agrg.cogs.nscc.ca/resources/lidar-
glossary
Types of Lidar – Platforms
 Satellite – mostly profiles
 Fixed-wing aircraft – most common cost-
effective
 Helicopter – higher accuracy over large areas
and air density/pollutant measurements
 Ground Based – Scan area around point
 Tabletop/vehicle mounted – specialized
applications for specific areas.
 3D scan – place object on rotating surface to
scan the object in 3 dimensions
Posting/Point Spacing Distance
 Distance between successive ground points
 Historic 5-8 Meters ( NC 2001)
 FEMA Flood standard 1.4 M/ USGS QL2 standard
0.7m posting
 High density 10 points /M
 FEMA requires better reporting/metadata
 http://www.fema.gov/plan/prevent/fhm/lidar_4b.shtm
From http://www.eijournal.com/LiDar_Mapping.asp
Lidar data outputs
 Ascii X,Y,Z
 Proprietary binary formats – older data going
away ( .ebn, .eebn)
 LAS format -Industry standard, not mandatory,
usually not all “required” fields populated. Many
lidar “cameras” are generating LAS as the
default data output. Single file size currently
limited to 4 billion points. (new version 1.4
supports many more points per file)
Bare Earth points
 Points derived from the data cloud believed to
represent the ground surface.
 Not easy – Generally leave to the experts.
Usually a standard deliverable. Can be done
with some free/open source tools.
http://grass.fbk.eu/grass64/manuals/html64_use
r/v.lidar.edgedetection.html.
 MCC-Lidar
http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/mcclidar/
Lidar Beam Spread and Multiple
Returns
As the light beam travels down to
the ground, it spreads out slightly
and can encounter obstructions on
the way. Power lines, rooftops, and
tree branches can all give return
reflections. There can be up to 5
returns per light pulse, but 1-3 is
more common
How Multiple Return Points are
derived

Note that Green laser lidar data


is full return. This means that the
Intensity of the return for given time slices
Is captured. In other words, the graph on
the left would have 100 or more
data values over the duration of the
laser pulse instead of 3.
For every beam/pulse
you end up with an X,Y,Z coordinate
for everything in the beam path
Lidar Point Cloud
Z

X Y
Return numbers/Return types
 Multiple returns from the same pulse (can be up
to 5, usually not more than 3)
 First of many, second of many, last of many
 First and only
 Not all lidar data sets contain this data :-(
 1/3 of NC data has no return numbers. 1/2 has
no intensities.
Intensity
 Measure of reflectance of target for each return
 Near infrared frequency lasers sensitive to
moisture, chlorophyll. Possible wetland
delineation tool, but is a relative measurement.
Data Volume increases with
resolution
Phase I 2001 Lidar 5-8 m
Posting = 92 GB multiple
return data set

Craven County 2007 Lidar


0.7m Posting = 80 GB
multiple return data set
Nationwide LiDAR Data collection
Under Discussion

“standard” resolution proposed Q2 = 0.7m posting


http://www.dewberry.com/Consultants/GeospatialMapping/FinalReport-
NationalEnhancedElevationAssessment
Software Tools
 LP360 plugin for ArcGIS/ERDAS $3000 + 18% per year Maintanence
 LASTools – command line, extraordinarily fast. Some free, some commercial
at $1.5K per tool or $4k for the bundle
http://www.cs.unc.edu/~isenburg/lastools/
 LASZIP - http://www.laszip.org/ - use from the command line laszip-cli.exe –
h for options. Free software under LGPL license
 Fusion LTK – USFS maintained tool for canopy/fuel analysis
 Liblas – http://liblas.org - command line tool for reading,extracting, and
manipulating LAS format data.
 Pdal – http://www.pdal.io/ - Successor to Liblas, more generic point cloud
formats
 GRASS – Can handle large multiple return data sets
 ArcGIS 10.1 – Can read LAS files, but need to import to Lidar Dataset first to
analyze in bulk. Newer versions have .zlas format for Lidar
 Envi LAS modules
Reprojecting masses of points
 Cs2cs - command line utility for point
coordinate reprojection – part of FWTools
utilities
 Liblas – Uses gdal libraries.
 Pdal – uses gdal libraries
 Some Lidar data does not have projection
information in the LAS file – read the Metadata.
Fun things you can do with Lidar
Data….
Canopy Heights

Canopy Heights in Feet

From GRASS 7.0 r.in.lidar


Canopy heights and bird nests

Mean Height at 75m seems to be washing out differences between


species, see RCW and Painted Bunting
Skewness of Z values of LiDAR points
in each cell.

Negative
Skew

Positive
Skew
Skewness of Z values of LiDAR points .

From GRASS 7.0 r.in.lidar


Skewness at 25m
RCW Populations (1998-2003) in Northeast
NC (NENC), Onslow Bight (ONSB), SE NC
(BSL), and NC Sandhills (SAND)

Intra Species differences by location


RCW Canopy Heights in Northeast NC
(NENC1), Onslow Bight (ONSB2), SE NC
(BSL3), and NC Sandhills (SAND4)
RCW Skew in Northeast NC (NENC1),
Onslow Bight (ONSB2), SE NC (BSL3),
and NC Sandhills (SAND4)
RCW Variance in Northeast NC (NENC1),
Onslow Bight (ONSB2), SE NC (BSL3),
and NC Sandhills (SAND4)
Percent of the Point Cloud in 0 – 10 ft layer

From GRASS 7.0 r.in.lidar


Percent of the Point Cloud in 10 – 20 ft layer

From GRASS 7.0 r.in.lidar


Percent of the Point Cloud in 20 – 30 ft layer

From GRASS 7.0 r.in.lidar


Vertical Profile of Red-cockaded
woodpecker
at 25m
Vertical Profile of Bachman's
Sparrow at 25m
Vertical Profile of Painted
bunting at 25m

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