Question about using lidar vs ground surveys on that dig site in New Mexico

I was working on a small site near Santa Fe last month and we did lidar scans first then went in with ground surveys. The lidar showed way more detail than we got walking the grid, especially around those buried wall lines near the old pueblo ruins. Has anyone else run into issues with lidar missing small artifacts that ground surveys catch?

4 comments

4 Comments

robin5911mo ago

Watch for lidar missing bones or pottery since ground scans still beat sensors on small stuff.

skyler_jackson271mo ago

Respectfully @robin591, lidar actually catches pottery patterns better than you'd expect if the ground is bare.

ray35619d ago

And it's kind of funny, you see the same thing with phone cameras if you think about it. People swear you need a fancy DSLR for everything, but on a sunny day with a good angle, a phone can grab details on a potsherd that you'd miss trying to set up a tripod. Lidar's just the same deal, it's all about matching the tool to the conditions. Walk the grid for the tiny stuff, but let the sensor do the heavy lifting for the big picture layouts.

joel_jones1mo ago

Got used to thinking lidar was just for big stuff like trench outlines or foundation lines, but after seeing a bare ground scan in Arizona I had to admit I was wrong. The detail on pottery scatter was way clearer than what I'd expected, almost like looking at a photograph compared to the old survey maps. Still think you gotta walk the grid for small bones or flakes though, those little items just don't show up no matter how good the sensor is. But for big patterns and buried wall lines I'm totally converted now.