Objectives

Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) has been widely used to solve problems in the natural and built environments. This course introduces LiDAR principles, data processing methods, and applications in forestry, urban environments, and geosciences. It includes lectures, demos, hands-on exercises, Esri tutorials, and a course project. It is for those who have worked with vector and raster data using Esri’s ArcGIS. Students will develop skills to effectively use LiDAR data in a geographic information system environment for solving real world problems, and develop a course project on LiDAR data processing, analysis, or applications.

Textbook:LiDAR Remote Sensing and Applications, CRC Press/Taylor & Francis Group, 200 pages. Authors: Pinliang Dong and Qi Chen (2018). ISBN: 9781138747241, or 9781482243017.

Software:ArcGIS Desktop 10.6, with 3D Analyst, ArcScan, and Spatial Analyst.

Course Project

Each student will complete an individual course project involving LiDAR data. Students should discuss project ideas with the instructor, identify a proper project topic, find LiDAR data for the project, and complete the project by the final week. The course project can be on LiDAR data processing and analysis methods, or any application of LiDAR. Each student will give a 10-minute presentation, and submit a course project report of 5– 8 single-spaced pages (including tables, figures, and references).

Course project instructions:

Check if free LiDAR data is available for your study area, or identify a study area based on the availability of LiDARdata.

LiDAR data sources:

Open Topography(http://www.opentopography.org)
USGS Earth Explorer(http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov)
United States Interagency Elevation Inventory(https://coast.noaa.gov/inventory/)
NOAA Digital Coast(https://www.coast.noaa.gov/dataviewer/#)
Wikipedia LiDARhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Lidar_Dataset_(United_States)
LiDAR Online(http://www.lidar-online.com)
National Ecological Observatory Network – NEON (http://www.neonscience.org/data- resources/get-data/airborne-data)
LiDAR Data for Northern Spain (http://b5m.gipuzkoa.net/url5000/en/G_22485/PUBLI&consulta=HAZLIDAR)
LiDAR Data for the United Kingdom (http://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/list/?return_obj=ob&id=8049,8042,8051,8053)

If you want to use LiDAR data in Denton County, please read “Denton County LiDAR LASTiles”.

Identify a proper research topic (urban environment, vegetation/forestry, geoscience, emergency management, etc.) and start working on yourproject.

If you want to look for research papers, you can use a UNT computer to visit http://www.sciencedirect.com/, search for papers using keywords, and save papers as PDF files. If you use your home computer, you can visit http://http://www.library.unt.edu/, go to “Database” and select “ScienceDirect Journals”, then login using your EUID to start searching forpapers.

If you are still looking for LiDAR data for your course project, you may want to check out the TNRIS data catalog at https://tnris.org/data-catalog/. I just downloaded LiDAR data for an area in Houston today.

StepsfordownloadingLiDAR datafromTexasNaturalResourcesInformationSystem(TNRIS)

Visit TNRIS Data Search and Download webpage athttps://tnris.org/data-download/#!/statewide. Select a county (e.g. Dallas) and hitreturn.

Click the county (e.g. Dallas) on the map to get quadrangles in the county. Type a quadrangle name and hitreturn.

Scroll down the webpage and select a quarter to download. You can save the downloaded data to a folder (e.g.C:\temp\Dallas).

The downloaded file is a zip file which can be unzipped to obtain several folders. The LiDAR DEM rasters are in the “dem” folder, and the point clouds are in the “las” folder. You can use the DEM rasters in ArcGIS directly, but if you want to use the point cloud data, see instructions in Steps 5 &6.

The downloaded files in the “las” folder are zipped LAS file (*.laz). LAZ files are supported in ArcGIS Pro, but not in ArcGIS 10.x (unless you have the Esri Data Interoperability Extension). Youcan

download a program called “laszip.exe” at http://www.cs.unc.edu/~isenburg/lastools/(right click laszip.exe in the list and save it to the same folder as your .laz files).

If you are using Windows 10, you can type “cmd” in the search box and hit return to open the command window. Change to the “las” folder, and run “laszip *.laz” to get the LAS files for LiDAR point clouds. See attached screenshots fordetails.

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