Fernworthy LiDAR Day

Fernworthy LiDAR Day

Fernworthy Lidar dayLiDAR mapping is a relatively new technique to enable digital aerial photographs to be taken of the landscape. It has great potential to help archaeologists explore the landscape and look for clues of previous human inhabitation. During the development of the scheme we surveyed Fernworthy, Bellever, Soussons and the East Dartmoor NNR. The LiDAR is able to see through the woodland canopy and map the forest floor to enable us to see a landscape without trees.

We met with an enthusiastic group of volunteers on Thursday 23rd April to look at some of the maps produced by LiDAR and to try out the technique of "ground truthing". We had identified features we already knew about from the HER and marked them on the LiDAR maps and we also highlighted potential features. The day was an attempt to match up the mapping with features on the ground to see what things were picked up- how big a feature might have to be- how easy it might be to miss features. The day proved to be very interesting - sadly we didn't discover a new hut circle! but we did identify the continuation of some wall features- all of which is potentially very exciting.

The next step will be to develop the project into a formal survey and to help potential volunteers develop skills to manipulate the LiDAR data and to survey it on the ground. If you would like to find out more or get involved please contact Andy at andy@moorthanmeetstheeye.org
A big thank you to all those who came along on the day

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Last update: 02 Nov 2015 12:40pm