Booloominbah captured by lidar
“Town and gown” collaborated in the air last week, when the university and Armidale Regional Council took advantage of a visit by NM Group, a remote sensing specialist, to collect high-resolution 3D images of the Smart Farm and council projects.
The team used a helicopter-mounted lidar unit, which fires a laser 300,000 times per second and collects information about the reflected light. The system generates a 3D “point cloud” from the reflections which allows the accurate measurement of the ground surface as well as the height of trees and other 3D features, in unprecedented detail.
The light can pass through gaps in the tree canopy so allows the mapping of the ground and tree canopy accurately, to within a few centimetres.
The fly-over also produced a 5cm resolution 4-band RGB, NIR ortho-image (a photo). 5cm imagery is sufficient to see features as small as individual tussocks in a paddock, or the tops of fence-posts.
This lidar + aerial photo will provide a baseline dataset for the ongoing monitoring and maintenance of the UNE rural properties and Campus; and will be used for current research on carbon sequestration, riparian management and fauna movement.
Professor David Lamb said the data will be an invaluable part of the ‘SMART Farm 17’ campaign, planned for mid next year, that will involve researchers from all around Australia, testing new sensors and landscape evaluations protocols.
The data will also be used to help with the ongoing campus master plan.
Council is using the data for the consequence assessment of a potential Puddledock dambreak. Puddledock Dam, a supplementary water supply dam, is on Puddledock Creek about 14km north of Armidale.
The visit was arranged and coordinated by Arjan Wilkie, an Armidale resident and current PhD student at UNE and a member of PARG, studying high-resolution carbon accounting.
Arjan also provides spatial analysis and mapping services to small and medium sized businesses and agencies under the business name of EcoGeoSpatial.