Laser Scanning with AAD's LiDAR system
Some samples of airborne laser scanner data
Figure 1 shows an example of airborne scanning of research and supply vessel Aurora Australis in the Antarctic. The ship was used as a base during the SIPEX 2007 expedition and anchored in relatively thin sea ice during the survey. From laser range measurements surface elevation has been calculated. The shape of the ship is clearly shown with the highest parts of the superstructure reaching more than 35 m. The bow mast appears also as a clear feature, along with containers stored on the hatch covers and the large 25 t crane in stowed position. The Worbot-crane holding an underway sea ice thickness measurement device (aka Worbot) sticks out the port side the ship. The helicopter deck has general height above sea level (depending on bunker status) of about 8 m.
About 1 million surface elevation points (approx. 3000 scanner lines; about 2 km flight track) over a section of the Dalton Iceberg Tongue at 66.21°S, 122.35°E are shown in figure 2. These data have been collected on 22 September 2007 at about midnight UT. A prominent feature in the north-west corner of the image is a sea ice enclosed iceberg with an edge height of about 30 m and two smaller icebergs further down to the south-east. Some distinctive floes can be seen within the sea ice matrix and even wind-blown features like snow dunes can be identified in the data.
This last example (figure 3) shows uncalibrated echo intensities of laser returns over snow covered sea ice, again 1 million measurements (approx. 3000 scanner lines; about 2 km flight track). White areas within the scan are open water patches, where practically no echo is returned apart from a very narrow nadir area. However, different structures are clearly visible in the scan, which might relate to different ice types or snow properties. These data have been collected on 22 September 2007 at about 23:00 hours UT.
Contact
PI: Jan L. Lieser (Please replace '[at]' with '@' before clicking 'send'.)
Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre
+61 (0)3 6226 7899
Tony Worby (Please replace '[at]' with '@' before clicking 'send'.)
Australian Antarctic Division
+61 (0)3 6226 2985