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The results, recently announced by Honduras President PorfirioLobo, mark the successful completion of the first light detectionand ranging (LiDAR) survey of that country's Mosquitia region, oneof the world's least-explored virgin rainforests. An initial analysis of the LiDAR survey has identified ruins thatcould be those of Ciudad Blanca or other long-hidden sites. Theinformation provides archaeologists with the precise locations offeatures within fractions of meters for further study. UH serves as the operational center for NCALM, a collaborativeprogram between UH and the University of California at Berkeley.NCALM focuses on the collection of research quality, airborne LiDARdata for NSF principal investigators, the advancement of airborneLiDAR technology and applications and the education of students tofill positions in academic, government and commercial organizationsrequiring knowledge of airborne LiDAR. The NCALM Operational Center's experience in completing more than150 projects across the nation was critical to the successfulcompletion of the Honduras mapping project, which was initiated byUTL Scientific LLC., a group formed by principals of the HonduranLiDAR survey project. UTL project leader Steve Elkins has been fascinated with theMosquitia rainforest since his first visit there nearly 20 yearsago, but he has been frustrated by the inability of satelliteimagery to see under the extremely thick canopy. He contactedresearchers at UH, NCALM and Geosensing Systems Engineering (GSE)Graduate Research Program to overcome this obstacle. UH professors Ramesh L. Shrestha and William E. Carter have beenworking with refining and applying airborne LiDAR to unveil thesurface of Earth, primarily for earth scientists researchingsurface processes, for more than a decade. In 2009, the UH researchers and a field team composed of MichaelSartori, Juan Fernandez‐Diaz and Abhinav Singhaniasuccessfully mapped the Caracol archaeological site in Belize usingairborne LiDAR. Even though the site was covered with denserainforest, the LiDAR data captured building ruins and agriculturalterraces not discovered by archaeologists working on the ground formore than 25 years. In the Honduras project, the UH team blanketed the area with asmany 25 to 50 laser pulses per square meter -- a total of more thanfour billion laser shots. A number of areas were mapped and theimages collected were reduced and filtered to remove the vegetationand provide "bare earth" digital elevation models in nearreal‐time in the field. The digital elevation models were then used to produce geodeticimages of the terrain's surface below the rainforest, and thoseimages were searched by eye to study geomorphological features aswell as potential archaeological ruins. The project has demonstrated the power of airborne laser mapping tolocate archaeological ruins in regions covered with thick forest,and it appears that the method will be used widely in the yearsahead. I am an expert from inflatable-zorb-ball.com, while we provides the quality product, such as Water Bird , Inflatable Water Walking Ball Manufacturer, Inflatable Bumper Ball,and more.
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